The invention belongs to the technical field of power system relay protection, and discloses an electric transmission line fault detection method based on voltage traveling wave prediction. The method comprises the following steps of: firstly, acquiring voltage and current traveling wave components at the two ends of an electric transmission line at each sampling moment in real time, and performing phase-mode transformation to obtain 0, alpha and beta mode voltage and current traveling wave components on the two end sides of the electric transmission line at each sampling moment; secondly, computing a voltage traveling wave prediction component of an electric transmission line end at a moment t; thirdly, computing a three-phase voltage traveling wave prediction component at each sampling moment according to the prediction component; and lastly, subtracting the three-phase voltage traveling wave prediction component at the end of the electric transmission line acquired in real time respectively, obtaining an absolute value, and performing setting judgment according to the absolute value. According to the method, the voltage traveling wave component at each sampling moment is not required to be evaluated through interpolation operation, so that operand is reduced, a fault detection function can be completed in a short data window of a quarter of period, and protection action speed is high; and the method is suitable for performing traveling wave protection in the entire transient fault process of electric transmission lines of various voltage classes.