To provide a woven fabric having high abrasion resistance and many advantages of three-layer fabrics.

The woven fabric for papermaking use is provided with a set of top machine direction (MD) yarns; a set of top cross machine direction (CMD) yarns interwoven with the top MD yarns to form a top fabric layer; a set of bottom MD yarns; a set of bottom CMD yarns interwoven with the bottom MD yarns to form a bottom fabric layer; and a plurality of stitching yarns interwoven with the top and bottom fabric layers. The yarns are interwoven as a series of repeat units. In each of the repeat units, each top CMD yarn forms multiple paper side floats, and at least a first of the paper side floats passes over a first number of top MD yarns, and at least a second of the paper side float passes over a second number of top MD yarns that differs from the first number by one.