Anti-Albanian sentiment or Albanophobia is discrimination and prejudice towards Albanians as an ethnic group, described primarily in countries with a large Albanian population as immigrants, seen throughout Europe.

A similar term used with the same denotation is anti-albanianism used in many sources similarly with albanophobia, although its similarities and/or differences are not defined. The opposite for Albanophobia is Albanophilia.

In 1889, Spiridon Gopčević published an ethnographic study titled Old Serbia and Macedonia that was a Serbian nationalist book on Kosovo and Macedonia and contained a pro-Serbian ethnographic map of Macedonia. Gopčević's biographer argues that he did not actually go to Kosovo and the study is not based on authentic experiences. Within scholarship, Gopčević's study has been noted for its plagiarisms, manipulations and misrepresentations, especially overstressing the Serbian character of Macedonia. Gopčević's views on Serbian and Albanian populations in Kosovo and also the issue of the Arnautaš theory or Albanians of alleged Serbian (descent) have only been partially examined by some authors. Noted for being an ardent Serbian nationalist, his book Old Serbia and Macedonia is seen as a work that opened the path for unprecedented Serbian territorial claims in the region.

The Expulsion of the Albanians was a lecture presented by the Yugoslav historian Vaso Čubrilović (1897–1990) on 7 March 1937.

A series of massacres of Albanians in the Balkan Wars were committed by the Montenegrin Army, Serbian Army and paramilitaries, according to international reports. During the First Balkan War of 1912–13, the Serbia and Montenegro fought against the Ottoman Empire (many Albanians were among the Ottoman forces) and expelled the Ottoman forces in present-day Albania and Kosovo. The anti-Ottoman forces committed numerous war crimes against the Albanian population, which were reported by the European, American and Serbian opposition press. Most of the crimes happened between October 1912 and summer of 1913. The goal of the forced expulsions and massacres of ethnic Albanians was statistic manipulation before the London Ambassadors Conference which was to decide on the new Balkan borders. According to contemporary accounts, between 20,000 and 25,000 Albanians were killed during the first two to four months of the Balkan Wars. Many of the victims were children, women and old people and were part of a warfare of extermination. Aside from massacres, civilians had their lips and noses severed. After the Second World War, thousands of Cham Albanians in Thesprotia, Greece were victims of forced migration and ethnic cleansing by the National Republican Greek League (EDES) from 1944 to 1945.

The term "Albanophobia" was coined by Anna Triandafyllidou in a report analysis called Racism and Cultural Diversity in the Mass Media published in 2002. Although, the first recorded usage of the term comes from 1982 in The South Slav journal, Volume 8 by Albanian author Arshi Pipa. The report by Triandafyllidou represented Albanian migrants in Greece.

The origins of anti-Albanian propaganda in Serbia started in the 19th century with claims made by Serbian state on territories that were about to be controlled by Albanians after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. By the late nineteenth century, Albanians were being characterized by Serbian government officials as a "wild tribe" with "cruel instincts". Although Jovan Cvijić acknowledged that Albanians were an autochthonous population of the Balkans, predating the arrival of the Slavs, he nevertheless described them as "the most barbarous tribes of Europe." Meanwhile, politician Vladan Đorđević described Albanians as "modern Troglodytes" and "prehumans who slept in the trees", claiming they still had "tails" in the nineteenth century.

Historian Olivera Milosavljević has written about the historical construction of Albanians as enemies of Serbs in Serbia through Serbian politicians and writers. Beginning in the 19th century, negative stereotypes regarding Albanians were formed by some Serbian authors. Albanians were described as enemies who by the 16th century had been instigated to terrorize Serbs by the Ottomans. According to Milosavljević, part of the modern intellectuals in Serbia wrote about Albanians mainly within the framework of these stereotypes, regarding their "innate" hatred and desire for the destruction of Serbs, which was a product of their dominant characteristic of "primitivism" and "robbery". Beginning in the mid-1980s, words such as "genocide", "oppression", "robbery", and "rape" were used when referring to Albanians in speeches, so that any mention of Albanians as a national minority contained negative connotations. Milosavljević has also noted how earlier authors depicted Albanians as incapable of having an autonomous state due to their "incivility", promoted and manipulated the stereotype of ‘Arbanised’ Serbs, leading to the contemporary claim that Skanderbeg was a Serb.