The El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO), which is one of the most striking interannual variabilities in the tropical Pacific, has been extensively studied for several decades. Understanding the changes in its characteristics is still an important issue in environmental and socioeconomic spheres worldwide. Recently, a new type of El Niño, the central Pacific (CP) El Niño, has emerged, in which maximum sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies are confined mostly to the CP—different to the canonical eastern Pacific (EP) El Niño, in which the maximum SST anomalies are located in the eastern Pacific. The more frequent occurrence of CP El Niño and its different impacts on global climate compared to EP El Niño have been well documented. However, a systematic examination of the performance of climate models in predicting the two types of El Niño had yet to be undertaken, and it remained controversial as to whether the predictability differs among state-of-the-art climate models.