<p>Principal leadership plays a crucial role in promoting teachers’ use of information and communication technology (ICT) in instruction. This study aimed to examine the relationship between principals’ distributed leadership and teachers’ ICT use in instruction, as well as the mediating role of teacher collaboration and ICT self-efficacy. The study analyzed data from the TALIS 2018 database, which included 2,977 Shanghai junior high school teachers, using PROCESS Model 6 and the bias-corrected percentile Bootstrap method. The results showed that (1) distributed leadership was significantly and positively associated with teacher collaboration, teachers’ ICT self-efficacy, and ICT use in instruction. (2) Teacher collaboration and ICT self-efficacy independently mediated the relationship between distributed leadership and teachers’ ICT use in instruction. (3) Teacher collaboration and ICT self-efficacy played a chain-mediating role between distributed leadership and teachers’ ICT use in instruction. These findings deepen our understanding of the underlying mechanisms through which distributed leadership facilitates teachers’ ICT use in instruction. It addresses the theoretical and empirical gaps in the existing literature on the impact of distributed leadership on teachers’ ICT use and offers concrete practical suggestions for improving distributed leadership and promoting teachers’ effective ICT use.</p>