The hybrid material of Mn-doped molybdenum disulfide/reduced graphene oxide (Mn-MoS2/rGO) is successfully fabricated through a one-pot hydrothermal method. The hybrid material, evaluated as electrochemical catalyst for the hydrogen evolution reaction (HER), exhibits improved catalytic activity and good stability for the HER in acidic medium with small overpotential (approximately 110 mV). Through analyses, it can be concluded that the improvement for electrochemical HER performance of the hybrid catalyst is ascribed not only to high conductivity mainly from reduced graphene oxide, but also to fundamental catalytic activity enhancement generated by Mn ions doping into the S-edge of MoS2 with a portion of Mo ions replacement. These results verify the facilitation effect of Mn-doping on HER activities, and the Mn-MoS2/rGO hybrid prepared in this work could be employed as a promising alternative to noble metal catalysts in HER. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.