Tripsacum laxum (Guatemalan grass) is a perennial fodder grasses, which is commonly growing in large parts of Africa for a source of livestock feed. It has a high economic value as a forage. In this study, we obtained a complete chloroplast genome of T. laxum by Illumina sequencing. The results showed a circular genome of 140,556 bp, including the large single copy region (LSC, 82,939 bp), the small single-copy region (SSC, 12,573 bp), and a pair of 22,522 bp inverted repeat regions (IRs). The circular genome contained 120 genes, including 74 protein-coding genes, eight ribosomal RNA genes and 38 tRNA genes. Evolutionary relationship analysis indicates that T. laxum is more closely related to previously reported T. dactyloides.