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The purpose of this work is to investigate the correlation between magnetism and crystallographic structures of Mn2NiGa thin films grown by molecular beam epitaxy on GaAs(1 1 1) and GaAs(0 0 1) surfaces. The films present themselves with thermoelastic martensitic transformations upon cooling, and heating with high-temperature leads to austenite structures exhibiting a preferable (1 1 0) texture. X-ray diffraction measurements performed as a function of temperature reveal three different types of domain variants in the films within a large interval of temperatures. The austenite structures with lattice parameters ranging from 0.574 nm to 0.601 nm undergo volume conserving structural transitions to martensite with a c/a ratio of 1.2. The coexistence of variants with different domain configurations is induced on each GaAs substrate. Although the Curie temperatures (~360 K) are similar for films grown on GaAs(1 1 1) and GaAs (0 0 1) substrates, their saturation magnetizations are respectively 18 kA m−1 and 8 kA m−1 at room temperature and exhibit quite different magnetic irreversibility behaviors. Our results indicate that a multiplicity of possible equivalent variant domains on the GaAs surfaces makes it difficult to stabilize epitaxial films on these substrates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]