The sequence of the 1600 3' terminal nucleotides of the RNA of rubella virus was determined from cDNA synthesized from both virion and intracellular RNA using reverse transcriptase and an oligodeoxythymidine primer and cloned into a bacterial plasmid vector. This sequence contained the complete coding sequence for virion envelope protein E1 and a 57 nucleotide nontranslated region between the stop codon for E1 and the poly A tract. The predicted size for E1 was 481 amino acids and within this sequence were three potential N-linked glycosylation sites and a putative trans-membrane domain near the carboxy terminus. Immediately preceding the E1 coding region was a putative signal sequence. No homology was found at either the amino acid or nucleotide level between the region of the rubella virus genome sequenced and corresponding regions of the genomes of the alphaviruses, the other genus of the family Togaviridae for which sequence information has been obtained.