Medicago ruthenica is an important leguminous forage resource in northern China. It plays an important role in grassland improvement, artificial grassland construction and ecological restoration. Under the background of climate change,the distribution of potential suitable areas of Medicago ruthenica in China is studied. Its planting zoning and germplasm conservation are of great significance. Using a maximum entropy model (MaxEnt), we predicted the suitable habitat distribution area and the contribution of the dominant climatic factors of Medicago ruthenica under six types of climate scenarios. The results showed that the suitable area of Medicago ruthenica in China under current climate is approximately 4. 5814 million km~2,accounting for 46. 90% of the total land area in China, were mainly concentrated in Inner Mongolia, Heilongjiang, Xinjiang, Gansu, Sichuan, Tibet, Jilin, Shaanxi,Yunnan, Hebei, central, Eastern Qinghai, Shanxi, Liaoning, Eastern Shandong, Northwestern Henan,Ningxia and other places. Precipitation of driest month (biol4),precipitation of coldest quarter (biol9),precipitation of the wettest month (bio13) and mean temperature of warmest quarter (biolO) was found to be dominant in influencing the geographic distribution of Medicago ruthenica. The suitable area of Medicago ruthenica of interglacial period are large and wide distribution, but the most suitable area was small, accounting for only 4. 79%. From the Last Glacial Maximum to the 2070 in the future, the suitable habitat area of the Medicago ruthenica becomes smaller than that of the Last interglacial climate under the five climate scenarios,while the area of the best suitable area is increased. In the five climate scenarios,the area and scope of the habitat of the Medicago ruthenica vary relatively little,and it would be weakly impacted by climate change.