Foshan (UK: /foʊˈʃæn/, US also /-ˈʃɑːn/; Chinese: 佛山) or Fatshan (also Fatsan, Jyutping: Fat6saan1) is a prefecture-level city in central Guangdong Province, China. The entire prefecture covers 3,848 km² (1,486 sq mi) and had a population of 9,498,863 as of the 2020 census. The city is part of the western side of the Pearl River Delta megalopolis, a conurbation housing 86,100,000 inhabitants, making it the biggest urban area of the world.

Foshan is regarded as the home of Cantonese opera, a genre of Chinese opera; Nanquan, a martial art; and lion dancing.

Fóshān is the pinyin romanization of the city's Chinese name 佛山, based on its Mandarin pronunciation. The Postal Map spelling "Fatshan" derives from the same name's local Cantonese pronunciation. Other romanizations include Fat-shan and Fat-shun. Foshan means "Buddha Mountain" and, despite the more famous present-day statue of Guanyin (or Kwanyin) on Mount Xiqiao, who isn't a Buddha, it refers to a smaller hill near the centre of town where three bronze sculptures of Buddha were discovered in AD 628. The town grew up around a monastery founded nearby that was destroyed in 1391.

Foshan remained a minor settlement on the Fen River for most of China's history. It developed around a Tang-era Buddhist monastery that was destroyed in 1391. The Foshan Ancestral Temple, a Taoist temple to the Northern God (Beidi) that was rebuilt in 1372, became the new focus of the community by the 15th century. Foshan had grown into one of the four great markets in China, primarily on the strength of its local ceramics but also on account of its metalwork. Soon its harbor on the Fen River was limited to ships of a thousand tons' burden but it remained well connected with Guangdong's other ports. By the 19th century, Foshan was considered by the English as the "Birmingham of China", with its steel industry responsible for the consumption of the majority of the province's iron production.

Foshan was connected to Guangzhou and Sanshui by rail in the early 20th century. The Ancestral Temple was converted into the Foshan Municipal Museum upon the victory of the Communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949.^{[citation needed]}

Foshan remained primarily focused on ceramic and steel production until the 1950s, when it became an urbanizing political center. On 26 June 1951, it left Nanhai County to become a separate county-level city and, in 1954, it was made the seat of the prefectural government. Its economy stagnated as a result of the Cultural Revolution—traditional ceramic ware was forbidden and its workshops were turned to producing Maoist and Revolutionary folderol—but it continued to grow, reaching 300,000 people by the 1970s, making it the province's second city after Guangzhou.

As early as 1973, however, its agriculture and consumer industries were permitted to become an export production base and a modern highway linked it to Guangzhou soon after. This permitted its party secretary Tong Mengqing and mayor Yu Fei to take full advantage when Deng Xiaoping introduced the reform and opening up after the fall of the Gang of Four.

In 1983, Foshan was promoted to a prefecture-level city with its former core becoming the new Chancheng District but lost the southwestern half of its former territory to Jiangmen. On 8 December 2002, Shunde and Nanhai joined its urban core as a full district.^{[citation needed]}