The colonization of the Moon is a process or concept employed by some proposals for robotic or human exploitation and settlement endeavours on the Moon. Often used as a synonym for its more specific element of settling the Moon (the establishing and expanding of lunar habitation), lunar or space colonization as a whole has become contested for perpetuating colonialism and its exploitive logic in space.

Laying claim to the Moon has been declared illegal through international space law and no state has made such claims, despite having a range of probes and artificial remains on the Moon.

While a range of proposals for missions of lunar colonization, exploitation or permanent exploration have been raised, current projects for establishing permanent crewed presence on the Moon are not for colonizing the Moon, but rather focus on building moonbases for exploration and to a lesser extent for exploitation of lunar resources.

The commercialization of the Moon is a contentious issue for national and international lunar regulation and laws (such as the Moon treaty).

Colonization of the Moon has been imagined as early as the first half of the 17th century by John Wilkins in A Discourse Concerning a New Planet.

Colonization of the Moon as a material process has been taking place since the first artificial objects reached the Moon after 1959. Luna landers scattered pennants of the Soviet Union on the Moon, and U.S. flags were symbolically planted at their landing sites by the Apollo astronauts, but no nation claims ownership of any part of the Moon's surface. Russia, China, India, and the U.S. are party to the 1967 Outer Space Treaty, which defines the Moon and all outer space as the "province of all mankind", restricting the use of the Moon to peaceful purposes and explicitly banning military installations and weapons of mass destruction from the Moon.

The landing of U.S. astronauts was seen as a precedent for the superiority of the free-market socioeconomic model of the U.S., and in this case as the successful model for space flight, exploration and ultimately human presence in the form of colonization. In the 1970s the word and goal of colonization was discouraged by NASA and funds as well as focus shifted away from the Moon and particularly to Mars. But the U.S. eventually nevertheless opposed the 1979 Moon Agreement which aimed to restrict the exploitation of the Moon and its resources. Subsequently, the treaty has been signed and ratified by only 18 nations, as of January 2020, none of which engage in self-launched human space exploration.

After U.S. missions in the 1990s suggested the presence of lunar water ice, its actual discovery in the soil at the lunar poles by Chandrayaan-1 (ISRO) in 2008–2009 renewed interest in the Moon. A range of moonbases have been proposed by states and public actors. Currently the U.S.-led international Artemis program seeks to establish with private contractors a state run orbital lunar way-station in the late 2020s, and China proposed with Russia the so-called International Lunar Research Station to be established in the 2030s and aim for an Earth-Moon Space Economic Zone to develop by 2050.