We report the complete chloroplast DNA (cpDNA) of Populus qiongdaoensis T. Hong et P. Luo, which is an endangered tree species, by employing next-generation sequencing reads and de novo assembly. The chloroplast genome of P. qiongdaoensis is 1,56,074 bp in length, with 36.70 % GC content. It contains a pair of inverted repeats (27,548 bp) which were separated by a large single copy (84,467 bp) and a small single copy region (16,512 bp). A total of 131 genes were annotated, which included 86 protein-coding genes, 37 tRNA genes and eight rRNA genes. A neighbor joining tree based on the reported chloroplast genomes of Populus showed that the chloroplast of the P. qiongdaoensis is most closely related to the P. tremula and P. rotundifolia.