At present, the detection of environmental elements such as thallium and arsenic in melting process of gold concentrate has attracted more and more attention. However, there is no standard about the detection of thallium in gold concentrate ore.The gold concentrate sample was decomposed by hydrochloric acid, nitric acid, hydrofluoric acid and perchloric acid. The thallium was enriched using polyurethane foam in aqua regia medium in presence of hydrogen peroxide and ferric trichloride, realizing the separation from impurities. Then, it was eluted with nitric acid (1+99) in boiling water bath. Tl 190.801 nm was selected as the analytical line. The determination method of thallium in gold concentrate ore by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) was established. The optimal separation and enrichment conditions were obtained by experiments: 15% (V/V) aqua regia, 3% (V/V) hydrogen peroxide and 0.5 g/L ferric salt. The mass concentration of thallium in range of 0.10-500 μg/mL was linear to the corresponding emission intensity with correlation coefficient of 0.999 9. The low limit of determination was 6.5 μg/g. The coexisting elements in gold concentrate did not influence on the determination due to the separation and enrichment effect of foam. The proposed method was applied to the determination of thallium in four gold concentrate ore samples. The relative standard deviation (RSD, n=11) was 2.1%-5.0%. The recovery test of standard addition was conducted according to the experimental method, and the recoveries were between 92% and 101%.