This paper presents a new direct active and reactive power control (DPC) of grid-connected doubly fed induction generator (DFIG)-based wind turbine systems. The proposed DPC strategy employs a nonlinear sliding-mode control scheme to directly calculate the required rotor control voltage so as to eliminate the instantaneous errors of active and reactive powers without involving any synchronous coordinate transformations. Thus, no extra current control loops are required, thereby simplifying the system design and enhancing the transient performance. Constant converter switching frequency is achieved by using space vector modulation, which eases the designs of the power converter and the ac harmonic filter. Simulation results on a 2-MW grid-connected DFIG system are provided and compared with those of classic voltage-oriented vector control (VC) and conventional lookup table (LUT) DPC. The proposed DPC provides enhanced transient performance similar to the LUT DPC and keeps the steady-state harmonic spectra at the same level as the VC strategy.