The sunspot area is a critical physical quantity for assessing the solar activity level; forecasts of the sunspot area are of great importance for studies of the solar activity and space weather. We developed an innovative hybrid model prediction method by integrating the complementary ensemble empirical mode decomposition (CEEMD) and extreme learning machine (ELM). The time series is first decomposed into intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) with different frequencies by CEEMD; these IMFs can be divided into three groups, a high-frequency group, a low-frequency group, and a trend group. The ELM forecasting models are established to forecast the three groups separately. The final forecast results are obtained by summing up the forecast values of each group. The proposed hybrid model is applied to the smoothed monthly mean sunspot area archived at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). We find a mean absolute percentage error (MAPE) and a root mean square error (RMSE) of 1.80% and 9.75, respectively, which indicates that: (1) for the CEEMD-ELM model, the predicted sunspot area is in good agreement with the observed one; (2) the proposed model outperforms previous approaches in terms of prediction accuracy and operational efficiency.