Arad (Hebrew: ערד (audio)^ⓘ) is a city in the Southern District of Israel. It is located on the border of the Negev and the Judaean deserts, 25 kilometres (16 miles) west of the Dead Sea and 45 kilometres (28 miles) east of Beersheba. The city is home to a diverse population of 29,323 in 2023, including Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jews (both secular and religious), Bedouins and Black Hebrews, as well as new immigrants.

After attempts to settle the area in the 1920s, Arad was founded in November 1962 as an Israeli development town, the first planned city in Israel. Arad's population grew significantly with the Aliyah from the former Soviet Union. It became a city in 1995.

Landmarks in Arad include the ruins of Tel Arad, Arad Park, a domestic airfield and Israel's first legal race circuit. The city is known for its annual summer music festival, the Arad Festival.

Arad is named after the Biblical Bronze Age Canaanite and later Israelite town located at Tel Arad (a Biblical archaeology site famous for the discovery of ostraca), which is located approximately 8 kilometers (5.0 mi) west of modern Arad.

The Bible (Judges 1:16) describes it as a Canaanite stronghold whose king kept the Israelites from moving from the Negev to the Judean Mountains, although Tel Arad was destroyed over 1,200 years before the arrival of the Israelites. However, Shoshenq I's chronicles seem to mention a settlement in Tel Arad. After its destruction during the Canaanite era, the town lay abandoned for centuries before being resettled by the Israelites from the 11th century BCE onward. The Israelites initially settled it as an unwalled piece of land cut off as an official or sacred domain was established on the upper hill. It was later a garrison-town known as "The Citadel". The citadel and sanctuary are believed to have been constructed at the time of Kings David and Solomon. Artifacts found within the sanctuary of the citadel mostly reflect offerings of oil, wine, wheat, etc. brought there by numerous people during the time of the Kingdom of Judah, up to Judah's fall to the Babylonians.

Under the Judaean kings, the citadel was periodically refortified, remodeled and rebuilt, until ultimately it was destroyed between 597 BCE and 577 BCE whilst Jerusalem was under siege by Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar II. However, during the Persian, Hasmonean, Roman, and early Muslim eras, locals continued to transport these items to the sacred precinct of the upper hill. Markers of these ancient Israelite rituals remain to this day, with broken pottery littering the entire site.

During the Byzantine period, the location was still correctly identified by Eusebius. Nomadic Bedouins preserved the name "Arad" for 1,100 years, even as the site remained uninhabited.

Ancient Arad became a Christian bishopric. Stephanus, one of its bishops, was a signatory of the synodal letter of John III of Jerusalem against Severus of Antioch in 518 and took part in the 536 synod of the three Roman provinces of Palaestina Prima, Palaestina Secunda, and Palaestina Salutaris (to the last of which Arad belonged) against Anthimus I of Constantinople. No longer a residential bishopric, Arad is today listed by the Catholic Church as a titular see.