[Background] Senecio jacobaea, a common weed native in Eurasia and invasive in North American, Australia and New Zealand. However, the occurrence records of this species in Xinjiang, China, are limited. Once successfully introducted, S. jacobaea can be damaging to crop, livestock farming, and human health. Hence, it is urgent to estimate the potential distribution of S. jacobaea in China.[Method] Based on 19 current and predicted (2050) climate variables and occurrence records from China and the other areas in the world, we quantitatively predicted the current and future potential distribution of S. jacobaea in China with the Maxent and DivaGIS. The predicted models were evaluated by the receiver operator characteristic (ROC) curve. In addition, we calculated the climate thresholds of annual mean temperature and annual precipitation of the S. jacobaea distribution in different areas (Europe-the native area, North America and Oceania-the invasive area, and China) by modeling in Maxent.[Result] The model built with occurrence data from China is better than that with the data from the whole world in relation to ROC curve and comparison to the occurrence record from China, but results of both model show that the current and future distribution area of S. jacobaea is in Xinjiang, China. The annual average temperature and precipitation in China are lower than in other regions for S. Jacobaea invasion.[Conclusion and significance] S. jacobaea is and will be limited in Xinjiang China. The differences between two predicting models and different climatic thresholds of S. jacobaea distribution in China compared to that in other regions indicate that the populations of S. jacobaea in Xinjiang differ from those in other regions and may be a different subspecies.