The proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) is one of the most important power supplies. The operating temperature of the stack is an important controlled variable, which impacts the performance of the PEMFC. In order to improve the generating performance of the PEMFC, prolong its life and guarantee safety, credibility and low cost of the PEMFC system, it must be controlled efficiently. A nonlinear predictive control algorithm based on a least squares support vector machine (LS-SVM) model is presented for a family of complex systems with severe nonlinearity, such as the PEMFC, in this paper. The nonlinear off line model of the PEMFC is built by a LS-SVM model with radial basis function (RBF) kernel so as to implement nonlinear predictive control of the plant. During PEMFC operation, the off line model is linearized at each sampling instant, and the generalized predictive control (GPC) algorithm is applied to the predictive control of the plant. Experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness and advantages of this approach. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.