Within the last decade methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus belonging to CC398 has become a worldwide threat associated with livestock. More recently, methicillin-susceptible S. aureus (MSSA) belonging to CC398 have been increasingly reported as a cause of invasive infections in patients without livestock contact. It appears therefore necessary to implement a convenient tool for the surveillance this emerging pathogen. We evaluated the MALDI-TOF MS as a tool for rapid detection of S. aureus CC398. We used 626 S. aureus isolates characterized by a CC398-specific PCR, to constitute independent training (300 isolates including 60 isolates CC398) and validation sets (326 isolates including 82 isolates CC398). Fifteen peak biomarkers of CC398 were identified from the mass spectra of the training set. Ninety four % (307 of 326) of strains of the validation set were well assigned with an overall sensitivity of 93% and a specificity of 95%. Six CC398 and 13 non-CC398 isolates were misclassified. With MALDI-TOF MS, clinical laboratories could rapidly detect S. aureus CC398 associated with a higher mortality in hospitalized patients.