Abstract. A total coloring of a graph G is a coloring of all elements of G, i.e. vertices and edges, in such a way that no two adjacent or incident elements receive the same color. The total coloring problem is to find a total coloring of a given graph with the minimum number of colors. Many combinatorial problems can be efficiently solved for partial k-trees, i.e., graphs with bounded tree-width. However, no efficient algorithm has been known for the total coloring problem on partial k-trees although a polynomial-time algorithm of very high order has been known. In this paper, we give a linear-time algorithm for the total coloring problem on partial k-trees with bounded k
