In this paper we present a new electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection circuit called gate coupled and zener diode triggering silicon-controlled rectifiers (GCZDSCR) for IC protection. The proposed new SCR circuit consists of a trigger controlling and a holding SCR circuit, and the trigger controlling circuit is made of a gate-coupled circuit in parallel with a reverse-biased zener diode. The circuit can protect IC irrespective of the temporal voltage waveform of the overvoltage stress. In the dc overvoltage stress, the zener diode conducts a triggering current to trigger the SCR; in the dynamic ESD transient stress, both the gate-coupled circuit and the zener diode can conduct a triggering current to trigger the holding SCR circuit. Since the gate-coupled circuit has a shorter response time at high and fast-transient ESD overvoltage stress, the GC circuit takes over as the main role in determining the ESD transient response of the protection circuit.