Hydrogen is one of the sustainable and promising carriers for the renewable electricity storage. In this context, Hydrogen Evolution Reaction (HER) takes regained interest than the Oxygen evolution reaction. Besides the noble metals, carbon based materials are found to be effective for catalyzing these reactions. The metal encapsulated with graphitic layers shows good activities towards HER. In the present work, cuprous oxide encapsulated with graphitic carbon nitride was synthesized and further structural and morphological properties were analyzed by XRD, SEM and BET. The as synthesized Cu2O/g-C3N4 served as electrodes for electrochemical hydrogen evolution reaction. The synthesized Cu2O/g-C3N4 composites show better electrochemical surface area and enhanced electrocatalytic behavior (148.7 mV over-potential with an exchange current density of 12.8 mA cm−2 and a Tafel slope 55 mV/dec) in alkaline medium. © 2020 Elsevier B.V.