Earl's Court is a district of Kensington in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in West London, bordering the rail tracks of the West London line and District line that separate it from the ancient borough of Fulham to the west, the sub-districts of South Kensington to the east, Chelsea to the south and Kensington to the northeast. It lent its name to the now defunct pleasure grounds opened in 1887 followed by the pre–World War II Earls Court Exhibition Centre, as one of the country's largest indoor arenas and a popular concert venue, until its closure in 2014.

In practice, the notion of Earl's Court, which is geographically confined to the SW5 postal district, tends to apply beyond its boundary to parts of the neighbouring Fulham area with its SW6 and W14 postcodes to the west, and to adjacent streets in postcodes SW7, SW10 and W8 in Kensington and Chelsea.

Earl's Court is also an electoral ward of the local authority, Kensington and Chelsea London Borough Council. Its population at the 2011 census was 9,104.

Earl's Court was once a rural area, covered in orchards, green fields and market gardens. The Saxon Thegn Edwin held the lordship of the area prior to the Norman conquest. Subsequently, the land, part of the ancient manor of Kensington, was under the lordship of the de Vere family, the Earls of Oxford, descendants of Aubrey de Vere I, who held the manor of Geoffrey de Montbray, bishop of Coutances, according to the Domesday Book 1086. By circa 1095, his tenure had been converted, and he held Kensington directly from the crown. A church had been constructed there by 1104.

For centuries, Earl's Court remained associated with the De Vere family, who likely lent their comital title to the manor house that became known as the "Earl's Court". Ownership later transferred through marriage in the early 17th century to the family of Sir William Cope. His daughter Isabella married Henry Rich, an ambitious courtier who was created 1st Earl of Holland in 1624. The manor subsequently passed to Rich and the house later constructed at Holland Park would bear his name for posterity as Holland House. Eventually, the estate was divided into two parts. The part now known as Holland Park was sold to Henry Fox in 1762. The Earl's Court portion was retained and descended to William Edwardes, 1st Baron Kensington.

The original manor house was located on the site of the present-day Earl's Court, where the Old Manor Yard is now, just by Earl's Court tube station, eastern entrance. Earl's Court Farm is visible on Greenwood's map of London dated 1827.

In the late 18th century, the area began to transition from rural estates to suburban housing developments. The surgeon John Hunter had established a home and animal menagerie on the site of the former manor house in 1765. After his death in 1793, the property changed hands several times. For a period in the early 19th century it operated as a lodging house and asylum before being demolished in 1886.

At the beginning of the century, the estate was generating modest rents from farmland and some building leases.