In this paper, a triangular complementary split ring resonator (TCSRR) based compact metamaterial antenna for multiband operation is presented. TCSRR is used to achieve a compact antenna structure. The proposed antenna consists of a trapezoidal radiating patch with partial ground plane and loaded TCSRR. The trapezoidal radiating patch is responsible for lower and higher frequencies, wherein the two inner resonance frequencies are obtained by loading TCSRR structure. The negative permittivity characteristics of the TCSRR structure are demonstrated through waveguide setup method. The proposed antenna with compact size of 25 × 25 × 1.6 mm3 is developed and tested. The measured and simulated results are good in agreement with each other and it covers 2.4/5.2 GHz (WLAN), 2.5 GHz (WiMAX), 7.4 GHz (X-band downlink) and 8.2 GHz (ITU band) simultaneously. The proposed antenna design has good radiation pattern for both E-plane and H-plane in all the desired frequencies. © 2018, Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.