Today's industrial forming and machining processes of various materials, require precision and efficiency. A continuous improvement in wear resistance and mechanical properties of protective coatings is therefore a key factor for many applications. Especially, molybdenum (Mo) is a promising candidate to further improve the tribological properties of industrially high-quality coatings like Ti-Al-N. Therefore, we study the influence of Mo on the phase formation, mechanical properties, as well as wear performance of cathodic arc evaporated Ti_{1 − x − y}Al_xMo_yN hard protective coatings. According to our results, we can neither confirm nor rule out a solubility limit for molybdenum up to 12 at.% Mo and bias potentials U_bias between −40 and −120 V. With increasing Mo content, the deposition rate increases―basically due to the increased evaporation rate of the powder metallurgically prepared (Ti_0.5Al_0.5)_1 − yMo_y cathodes. For bias potentials of −80 and −120 V, the hardness is 36.6 ± 1.0 and 39.0 ± 0.6 GPa, respectively, and almost independent of the Mo content. But the wear rate significantly decreases with increasing Mo content by two orders of magnitude (from 3.0 · 10⁻⁵ mm³/Nm for Ti_0.56Al_0.44N to ≤ 2.1 10⁻⁷ mm³/Nm for Ti_0.50Al_0.38Mo_0.12N), accompanied by a reduction of the coefficient of friction from 1.0 to 0.5, respectively. Consequently, Ti_{1 − x − y}Al_xMo_yN coatings are superior in tribomechanical properties and wear performance to conventional Ti_0.56Al_0.44N.