We report total energy and electronic structure calculations for lanthanum monochalcogenides in B1 (NaCl) and B2 (CsCl) crystal structures over a range of unit cell volumes. We employed the tight binding linear muffin-tin orbital approach to density functional theory within the local density approximation to expand the crystal orbitals and periodic electron density. In agreement with the experiment we find that B1 phase is lower in energy than B2 phase, and that the compounds transforms to B2 structure under applied pressure. This is the first qualitative prediction of the transition in La monochalcogenides and should be testable with diamond-anvil technique. © 2002 Published by Elsevier Science Ltd.