Let \(G=(V(G),E(G))\) be a graph with \(V(G)=\{v_1,v_2,\ldots ,v_n\}\) , and let \(\overrightarrow{G}\) be the associated digraph of G by replacing each of its edges by two oppositely oriented arcs with the same ends. A complex unit gain graph, denoted by \(\Phi =(G,\varphi )\) , is a triple \((\overrightarrow{G},\mathbb {T},\varphi )\) consisting of \(\overrightarrow{G}\) , the circle group \(\mathbb {T}\) and a gain function \(\varphi : {E}(\overrightarrow{G})\rightarrow \mathbb {T}\) such that \(\varphi (\overrightarrow{e_{ij}})=\varphi (\overrightarrow{e_{ji}})^{-1}\) for \(e_{ij}=v_iv_j\in E(G)\) , where \(\mathbb {T}=\{z\in \mathbb {C}:|z|=1\}\) . In this paper, we introduce the Laplacian energy of a complex unit gain graph. We prove that the Laplacian energy of \(-\Phi \) is invariant under switching equivalence of complex unit gain graphs, and then present some bounds for the Laplacian energy of \(-\Phi \) in terms of the first Zagreb index of G and the real parts of the gains of the oriented cycles in suitably oriented graph of G, respectively.