The Bilala, also called Bulala or Boulala, are an ethnic group that mainly lives around Lake Fitri in the Batha region, central Chad. Most of the Bilala population are agricultural farmers and Muslims. The Bilala numbered around 205,000 in 2018.

The traditional capital of the Bilala is the town of Yao, which served as the seat of a small and independent Bilala-ruled sultanate in the 17th–20th centuries. The sultan of Yao remains the traditional leader of the Bilala people. Prior to the 17th century, the Bilala were closely associated with the history of the Kanem–Bornu Empire; in the 14th century, the Bilala captured Kanem (modern-day southwestern Chad) from that empire and ruled a kingdom there until they were driven away to their modern homeland.

The Bilala call themselves Balala. The common renditions Bilala, Bulala, and Boulala originate as foreign versions of this name. Boulala, a French rendition, is common in modern-day Francophone Chad. Other exonyms have sometimes been applied to the Bilala. The Bagirmi people call the Bilala Lis or Lisi and their rulers the Biyo Bulala. In Bornu (modern-day northeastern Nigeria), the Bilala are called the Kayi Bulala.

Much of the history of the Bilala is largely conjectural. The Bilala are first recorded in the 14th century as rivals of the Sayfawa dynasty, the rulers of the Kanem–Bornu Empire. The available source material leaves the origin of the Bilala and the reasons for the conflict unclear.

The modern-day Bilala people are a composite population, with a vaguely remembered oral tradition claiming Yemenite origin, similar to origin stories of the Sayfawa dynasty. Their name is sometimes connected to an eponymous ancestor figure named Bilal or Balal. Arabising legends cast Bilal as an early African convert to Islam and perhaps an early companion of the prophet. Bilal's descendants are said to have "mixed with the Arabs". Bilal has alternatively been interpreted as a local Kanembu figure, who organised a force to oppose the rule of the Sayfawa.

Oral histories collected in northeastern Nigeria and southwestern Chad in the 19th and early 20th centuries, published by Heinrich Barth and Palmer, claim that the Bilala were related to the Sayfawa. Barth claimed that the Bilala rulers were descendants of the 13th-century Sayfawa mai Dunama II Dabbalemi. Palmer considered this improbable and instead made the case that they were descended from mai Bulu, Kanem's legendary eighth mai. Later scholars have variously disputed and supported the idea of kinship between the Bilala and Sayfawa. According to the traditional accounts, the first ruler of the Bilala was Jil Sukumami (or Djil Sjikomeni), who Barth claimed was a son of Dunama II. Palmer placed Jil later than Barth, as a mid- to late 14th-century contemporary of the Sayfawa mais Idris I and Dawud.

It is unclear if the lands around Lake Fitri are the original homeland of the Bilala, or even whether the Bilala lived there before their association with Kanem. Several authors have considered this probable, including Gustav Nachtigal and Dierk Lange. Lange suggested that the Bilala were originally a pastoral people who lived around the lake. Richmond Palmer believed that the Bilala were entrusted with the lands around Lake Fitri by the Sayfawa rulers, perhaps in the 14th century.

Conflict between the Bilala and the Sayfawa erupted in the 14th century; according to the girgam (the royal chronicle of the Kanem–Bornu Empire), the Bilala defeated and killed the Sayfawa mai Dawud at this time. The Bilala were allied with the Toubou people during their conflicts with the Sayfawa.