The White-crested Elaenia (Elaenia albiceps) is a species of bird in the Tyrannidae family, the tyrant flycatchers. It has several subspecies breeding across southern and western parts of South America. Southern birds migrate north in winter.

Its natural habitats are temperate forests, subtropical or tropical moist montane forests, subtropical or tropical high-altitude shrubland, and heavily degraded former forest.

The White-crested Elaenia is a permanent resident in the central and southwestern coastal Andean region of South America in Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, and northernmost Chile. Also, in most of Argentina, mostly western, and southern and central Chile, Tierra del Fuego, it is also resident. It also eats a large variety of foods such as grass, berries, seeds, and nuts.

To the north and east in northeast Brazil, the Amazon Basin, and in the Amazonian Andes regions of eastern Colombia, Peru, and northern Bolivia southeastwards into eastern Brazil, White-crested Elaenia is a non-breeding resident bird, in the austral winter. In the entirety of South America, two thirds of its range is as a non-breeding migratory species. It is a vagrant to the Falkland Islands and in 2008 a bird was found in Texas, a potential first for the USA and North America