Iris lactea var. chinensis is a perennial herbaceous halophyte of the genus Iris and shows high salt tolerance and ornamental value. In order to study the molecular mechanism of salt tolerance in I. lactea, we cloned a WRKY transcription factor gene IlWRKY28 from I. lactea through rapid amplification of cDNA ends technology (RACE), and obtained a 1 302 bp fulllength cDNA sequence, which contains a 5′ untranslated region (UTR) of 108 bp, a 3′ UTR of 174 bp and an open reading frame of 1 020 bp. IlWRKY28 encodes 339 amino acids, the predicted protein molecular weight and isoelectric point is 37.22 kD and 7.04, respectively. Amino acid sequence analysis showed that IlWRKY28 contains a conserved WRKY motif and a C2H2type zinc finger domain. Phylogenetic analysis showed that I. lactea IlWRKY28 was much closer to Ananas comosus AcWRKY28 and Kobresia littledalei ClWRKY28. Quantitative PCR analysis showed that after salt treatment, the IlWRKY28 gene was significantly up regulated in the I. lactea shoots. The results of this study laid an important molecular foundation for the further study of the function and mechanism of IlWRKY28 in the tolerance of I. lactea to high salt stress.