ABSTRACT The low-mass star GJ 1151 has been reported to display variable low-frequency radio emission, which has been interpreted as a signpost of coronal star–planet interactions with an unseen exoplanet. Here we report the first X-ray detection of GJ 1151’s corona based on the XMM–Newton data. We find that the star displays a small flare during the X-ray observation. Averaged over the observation, we detect the star with a low coronal temperature of 1.6 MK and an X-ray luminosity of LX = 5.5 × 1026 erg s−1. During the quiescent time periods excluding the flare, the star remains undetected with an upper limit of $L_{\mathrm{ X},\, \mathrm{ qui}} \le 3.7\times 10^{26}$ erg s−1. This is compatible with the coronal assumptions used in a recently published model for a star–planet interaction origin of the observed radio signals from this star.