Classical Chinese poetry forms are poetry forms or modes which typify the traditional Chinese poems written in Literary Chinese or Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese poetry has various characteristic forms, some attested to as early as the publication of the Classic of Poetry, dating from a traditionally, and roughly, estimated time of around 11th–7th century BCE. The term "forms" refers to various formal and technical aspects applied to poems: this includes such poetic characteristics as meter (such as, line length and number of lines), rhythm (for example, presence of caesuras, end-stopping, and tone contour), and other considerations such as vocabulary and style. These forms and modes are generally, but not invariably, independent of the Classical Chinese poetry genres. Many or most of these were developed by the time of the Tang dynasty, and the use and development of Classical Chinese poetry and genres actively continued up until the May Fourth Movement, and still continues even today in the 21st century.

Gao Bing wrote the Graded Compendium of Tang Poetry (Tangshi Pinhui), which is the first work using prosodic principles in a systematic method to classify poetry by Classical Chinese poetry forms. This built upon an extensive but less systematic approach; for example, by Yan Yu.

There are various formal elements of Classical Chinese verse which are associated with its classification into formal types.

Various factors are considered in scanning Classical Chinese verse in order to determine the meter.

For the purpose of metrically scanning Classical Chinese verse, the basic unit corresponds to a single character, or what is considered one syllable: an optional consonant or glide (or in some versions of reconstructed Old or Middle Chinese a consonantal cluster), an obligatory vowel or vowel cluster (with or without glides), and an optional final consonant. Thus a seven-character line is identical with a seven-syllable line; and, barring the presence of compound words, which were rare in Classical Chinese compared to Modern Chinese (and even people's names would often be abbreviated to one character), then the line would also be a seven words itself. Classical Chinese tends toward a one-to-one correspondence between word, syllable, and a written character. Counting the number of syllables (which could be read as varying lengths, according to the context), together with the caesuras, or pauses within the line, and a stop, or long pause at the end of the line, generally established the meter. The characters (or syllables) between the caesuras or end stops can be considered to be a metric foot. The caesuras tended to both be fixed depending upon the formal rules for that type of poem and to match the natural rhythm of speech based upon units of meaning spanning the characters.

Line length could be fixed or variable, and was based on the number of syllables/characters. In more formal poetry it tended to be fixed, and varied according to specific forms. Lines were generally combined into couplets. Lines tended to be end-stopped; and, line couplets almost always. Line length is the fundamental metrical criterion in classifying Classical Chinese poetry forms. Once the line length is determined, then the most likely division(s) of the line by caesuras is also known, since they are as a rule fixed in certain positions. Thus, specifying the line-length of a Chinese poem is equivalent to specifying both the type of feet and the number of feet per line in poetry using quantitative meter.

A three-character line is known from the Three Character Classic, a book for children written in three-character eight-line verse in rhymed couplets.

Four-character lines are encountered in the popular form of verse matching, where two verses are matched, often with rhyme, and often traditional four-character idioms (chengyu), frequently drawn from classical poetry. For instance, two four-character lines may be written on matching scrolls, in Chinese calligraphy, and each decoratively hung on either side of a door or entrance way, these are known as Duilian. Some ancient style poetry was also four-line.