The Fourth Industrial Revolution, also known as 4IR, or Industry 4.0, is a neologism describing rapid technological advancement in the 21st century. It follows the Third Industrial Revolution (the "Information Age"). The term was popularised in 2016 by Klaus Schwab, the World Economic Forum founder and former executive chairman, who asserts that these developments represent a significant shift in industrial capitalism.

A part of this phase of industrial change is the joining of technologies like artificial intelligence, gene editing, to advanced robotics that blur the lines between the physical, digital, and biological worlds.

Throughout this, fundamental shifts are taking place in how the global production and supply network operates through ongoing automation of traditional manufacturing and industrial practices, using modern smart technology, large-scale machine-to-machine communication (M2M), and the Internet of things (IoT). This integration results in increasing automation, improving communication and self-monitoring, and the use of smart machines that can analyse and diagnose issues without the need for human intervention.

It also represents a social, political, and economic shift from the digital age of the late 1990s and early 2000s to an era of embedded connectivity distinguished by the ubiquity of technology in society (i.e. a metaverse) that changes the ways humans experience and know the world around them. It posits that we have created and are entering an augmented social reality compared to just the natural senses and industrial ability of humans alone. The Fourth Industrial Revolution is sometimes expected to mark the beginning of an imagination age, where creativity and imagination become the primary drivers of economic value.

The phrase Fourth Industrial Revolution was first introduced by a team of scientists developing a high-tech strategy for the German government. Klaus Schwab, former executive chairman of the World Economic Forum (WEF), introduced the phrase to a wider audience in a 2015 article published by Foreign Affairs. "Mastering the Fourth Industrial Revolution" was the 2016 theme of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting, in Davos-Klosters, Switzerland.

On 10 October 2016, the Forum announced the opening of its Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution in San Francisco. This was also subject and title of Schwab's 2016 book. Schwab includes in this fourth era technologies that combine hardware, software, and biology (cyber-physical systems), and emphasises advances in communication and connectivity. Schwab expects this era to be marked by breakthroughs in emerging technologies in fields such as robotics, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, biotechnology, the internet of things, the industrial internet of things, decentralised consensus, fifth-generation wireless technologies, 3D printing, and fully autonomous vehicles.

In The Great Reset proposal by the WEF, The Fourth Industrial Revolution is included as a strategic intelligence in the solution to rebuild the economy sustainably following the COVID-19 pandemic.

The First Industrial Revolution was marked by a transition from hand production methods to machines through the use of steam power and water power. The implementation of new technologies took a long time, so the period which this refers to was between 1760 and 1820, or 1840 in Europe and the United States. Its effects had consequences on textile manufacturing, which was first to adopt such changes, as well as iron industry, agriculture, and mining–although it also had societal effects with an ever stronger middle class.