German Venezuelans (German: Deutsch-Venezolaner; Spanish: Germano-venezolanos) are Venezuelan citizens who descend from Germans or German people with Venezuelan citizenship. Most of them live in Caracas, Maracaibo, Valencia, Colonia agrícola de Turén, El Jarillo, and Colonia Tovar where a small-reduced and decreasing minority of people speak the Colonia Tovar dialect, a German-derived dialect from their ancestry, and the Spanish language. In general, the descendants of Austrians, German-Swiss people, and German Italians (Italian citizens of German descent and speak German language) are also counted on this term.

Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor and King of Spain granted rights to the Augsburg banking families of Anton and Bartholomeus Welser in 1528 to colonize Venezuela. By 1531, the Welsers controlled the privilege. They set up a colonization scheme and sent Ambrosius Ehinger as governor to Santa Ana de Coro (German: Neu-Augsburg), the capital of Klein-Venedig or Welserland (as it was known in Germany) in 1529. On October 7, 1528, Ehinger left Seville with the Spaniard García de Lerma and 281 settlers and they headed towards the Venezuelan coast, where they arrived on February 24, 1529, at the region of Santa Ana de Coro. From there, he explored the interior searching for the city of El Dorado, a legendary golden city, whose myth had been created by the Spanish through a misunderstanding of indigenous Muisca traditions combined with the European desire for wealth. The myth was fueled by stories of a Muisca ceremony where a chief was covered in gold dust and washed in a lake, misinterpreted by the Spanish as evidence of a city made of gold. On September 8, 1529 Ehinger founded the colony of New Nuremberg (German: Neu-Nürnberg), today known as Maracaibo. The aforementioned rights were revoked in 1546 by Emperor Charles V due to non-compliance with the stipulations. Many of the German settlers died from tropical diseases, to which they had no immunity, or hostile Indian attacks during frequent journeys deep into Indian territory in search of gold.

When Juan de Carvajal was founding El Tocuyo in 1545, Spaniards and some German-speakers (German, Flemish and Swiss that did not agree with the Welser government) headed to that new town. Conversely, those Germans, some of them marrying Spanish and aboriginal ladies, decided to use a Spanish surname instead of using a Germanic one.

After some intentions of Nicolaus Federmann, George Hohermuth von Speier to consolidate a German State in this land, and after the death of Bartholomeus Welser and Philipp von Hutten, that ended up with the death of Juan de Carvajal, the Council of the Indies determined to cease the German administration upon Venezuela in 1546, because the Welser did not fulfill the treat of establishing cities and fortress and bringing settlers.

In addition, there are two town known as Cuara. One to the south of "Valles de Quibor" where its inhabitants state out that they descend from those Welser settlers . The other "Cuara" today "Campo Elias" near to Urachiche in the State of Yaracuy, where inhabitants, though having aboriginal features, also have blue and green eyes, hazel or blond hairs, claiming that they also descends from those Welsers that came to Venezuela approximately 500 years ago.

There is a saying in Cuara Quibor about the first Venezuela President Jose Antonio Paez Herrera. It is said that his mother Maria Violante Herrera was born in that Larense town. She had as a nickname "La Catira de los ojos azules" (The blue-eyed creole blonde [The term "catira" is a feminine form of "catire", a Venezuelan slang of "blond."])

Governors, Mayors and Lieutenant-Governors between 1528 and 1556

German Toponomy of in the regional geography