Objective To realize the geographical discrimination of early spring green tea of Huangjincha from major production areas in Hunan based on mineral element fingerprinting.Methods A total of 138 early spring green tea samples of Huangjincha from different regions in Hunan were quantitatively analyzed for 48 mineral elements using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS). Classification models for different production areas were developed by integrating principal component analysis (PCA), orthogonal partial least squares-discriminant analysis (OPLS-DA), and Fisher's linear discriminant analysis.Results The PCA score plots and OPLS-DA models effectively distinguished Huangjincha samples from various production areas in Hunan. A geographical discrimination model was constructed using Fisher's linear discriminant analysis based on 10 key elements (Ba, Al, B, Sm, K, Ga, Te, Rb, Co, Eu), achieving an overall prediction accuracy of over 90%.Conclusion Mineral element fingerprinting can be effectively applied to the origin traceability of Huangjincha from major production areas in Hunan.