Dehydrocyclizable hydrocarbons are converted to aromatics by contacting them at hydrocarbon dehydrocyclization conditions with an acidic multimetallic catalytic composite comprising a combination of catalytically effective amounts of a platinum group component, a nickel component, a zinc component, and a halogen component with a porous carrier material. The platinum group, nickel, zinc and halogen components are present in the multimetallic catalyst in amounts respectively, calculated on an elemental basis, corresponding to about 0.01 to about 2 wt. % platinum group metal, about 0.05 to about 5 wt. % nickel, about 0.01 to about 5 wt. % zinc, and about 0.1 to about 3.5 wt. % halogen. Moreover, the catalytically active sites induced by these metallic components are uniformly dispersed throughout the porous carrier material and these metallic components are present in the catalyst in carefully controlled oxidation states such that substantially all of the platinum group component is in the elemental metallic state, substantially all of the zinc component is preferably in an oxidation state above that of the elemental metal, and substantially all of the catalytically available nickel component is present in the elemental metallic state or in a state which is reducible to the elemental metallic state under hydrocarbon dehydrocyclization conditions, or in a mixture of these states. A specific example of the dehydrocyclization method disclosed herein is a method for converting a feed mixture of n-hexane and n-heptane to a product mixture of benzene and toluene which involves contacting the feed mixture and a hydrogen stream with the acidic multimetallic catalyst disclosed herein at hydrocarbon dehydrocyclization conditions.