Abstract: A complete set of inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) was established to determined 15 trace elements including copper, cobalt, silver, lead, antimony, beryllium, chromium, indium, yttrium, cadmium, manganese, titanium, tantalum, lanthanum and cerium in magnesium alloys by simple matrix matching method and internal standard method. The test results showed that the detection limits of each element were in the range of 0.003 9~1.6 μg/L. The recoveries were 95.1%~109.2%. The precision was 0.2%~2.3%. The method is simple, fast and efficient, and can meet the market demand for the detection of trace elements in magnesium alloys.