Background: According to the Barcode of Life Data Systems (BOLD, http://www.boldsystems.org), approximately a forth of the described echinoderm species have been already barcoded (more than 2,000, species barcoded out of the about 8,000 species described). However, only less than 300 of the ca. 29,000 echinoderm barcode records available on BOLD are from South Africa, a country with a coastline of more than 2,500 km on both the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. In an effort to explore the echinoderm diversity of South Africa, we barcoded 351 specimens collected during five different campaigns (from 1999 to 2016) in the North and South of the KwaZulu-Natal Province, across two distinct offshore environments. Results: Cross comparison between morphological and molecular identification allowed distinguishing ca. 114 species, including a number of new records for the country and some putative new species. These included Crinoidea (96 specimens and ca. 10 species), Ophiuroidea (95 specimens and ca. 44 species), Asteroidea (48 specimens and ca. 19 species), Echinoidea (27 specimens and ca. 12 species) and Holothuroidea (85 specimens and ca. 29 species). Nonetheless, DNA barcoding revealed unexpected large intraspecific distances (suggesting additional overlooked species) as well as clusters of heterospecific sequences (suggesting either poor marker resolution or the need for further taxonomical consideration). DNA barcodes obtained for more than 40 specimens showed distances of more than 1% with the DNA barcodes currently available in BOLD and GenBank. Significance: This data set will be further investigated using integrative taxonomy and will deliver a valuable addition to the reference library of DNA barcodes for echinoderms.