The 2012 AFL season was the 116th season of the Australian Football League (AFL), the highest-level senior Australian rules football competition in Australia.

The season featured eighteen clubs, with addition of the newly established Greater Western Sydney Giants, which was based in Western Sydney and split its home games between Sydney and Canberra.

The season ran from 24 March until 29 September, and comprised a 22-game home-and-away season followed by a finals series featuring the top eight clubs.

The premiership was won by the Sydney Swans for the fifth time, after it defeated Hawthorn by ten points in the 2012 AFL Grand Final.

The 2011 National Draft was held on 24 November in Sydney, making it only the second time it was held out of Melbourne. This is due to the entry of Greater Western Sydney.

Adelaide won the 2012 pre-season competition following a 34-point win over the West Coast Eagles at AAMI Stadium. It was their second pre-season cup premiership.

The fixture for this season was officially announced on 28 October 2011. Some of the features of the fixture included:

The addition of a ninth match in each round, and the new television rights deal requiring most matches to be shown live, influenced the scheduling of matches, and changed some traditional match starting times. In typical rounds, where nine matches were played between Friday and Sunday, the changes were: