This paper presents a double negative (DNG) metasurface-based multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antenna with a wideband operation for the sub6-GHz range of 5G communication. The MIMO antenna (called DNG-MIMO antenna) consists of two DNG metasurface antenna elements placed closely on a partialground with a U-shaped slot. The proposed DNG-MIMO antenna has a compact size of 20.5 mm X 40 mm with an operational bandwidth of 1500 MHz (4.9 GHz–6.4 GHz) and a peak gain of 3.49 dB. With a minimal interelement distance (0.18 λ, where λ is operating wavelength), the DNG-MIMO antenna exhibits very highisolation (s12<-25.5 dB) for the entire resonating bandwidth. The proposed DNG-MIMO antenna exhibits good MIMO performance metrics such as envelope correlation coefficient (ECC<0.003), diversity gain (DG = 10 dB), total active reflection coefficient (TARC<-10 dB), and channel capacity loss (CCL<0.3 bits/Hz/Sec). The total efficiency of the DNG-MIMO antenna is more than 80% across the operating bandwidth. Thus, with a miniaturized dimension, good MIMO performance metrics, and wide bandwidth, the proposed metasurface MIMO antenna is ideal for the upcoming 5G communication systems and various IoT applications. For analysing the practical applications of the proposed MIMO antenna, an 8-element DNG-MIMO is connected to an extended ground plane, the results obtained suggest no deterioration in s-parameters, efficiency, ECC and DG is observed.