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Abstract Vanadium dioxide (VO₂) is a well‐studied Mott‐insulator because of the very abrupt physical property switching during its semiconductor‐to‐metal transition (SMT) around 341 K (68 °C). In this work, through novel oxide‐metal nanocomposite designs (i.e., Au:VO₂and Pt:VO₂), a very broad range of SMT temperature tuning from≈323.5 to≈366.7 K has been achieved by varying the metallic secondary phase in the nanocomposites (i.e., Au:VO₂and Pt:VO₂thin films, respectively). More surprisingly, the SMTT_ccan be further lowered to≈301.8 K (near room temperature) by reducing the Au particle size from 11.7 to 1.7 nm. All the VO₂nanocomposite thin films maintain superior phase transition performance, i.e., large transition amplitude, very sharp transition, and narrow width of thermal hysteresis. Correspondingly, a twofold variation of the complex dielectric function has been demonstrated in these metal‐VO₂nanocomposites. The wide range physical property tuning is attributed to the band structure reconstruction at the metal‐VO₂phase boundaries. This demonstration paved a novel approach for tuning the phase transition property of Mott‐insulating materials to near room temperature transition, which is important for sensors, electrical switches, smart windows, and actuators.