A procedure is proposed for the joint determination of rifamycin SV and rifampicin by UV/VIS spectroscopy. A partial least-squares regression (PLS) was used for the resolution of the overlapping spectrophotometric signals from mixtures of the two drugs. The application of a genetic algorithm to select some of the predictor variables allows one to considerably reduce the number of experimental variables, as well as to improve the prediction capacity of the PLS model constructed with these selected potentials. Finally, the methods were applied to the determination of these drugs in biological samples.