Selective area growth of thin films reduces the number of steps in microfabrication processing and enables novel device structures. Here, we report, for the first time, selective area epitaxy of an oxide material on a GaN surface. Chlorination of the GaN surface via wet chemical processing is found effective to disrupt Mg adsorption and selectively prevent molecular beam epitaxy growth of MgO. MgO films grown on neighboring, nonchlorinated surfaces are epitaxial with a (111) MgOjj(0001) GaN crystallographic relationship. Better than 3 lm lateral resolution for the selective area growth of MgO on GaN is demonstrated.