Gippsland (/ˈɡɪpslænd/) is a rural region in the southeastern part of Victoria, Australia, mostly comprising the coastal plains south of the Victorian Alps (the southernmost section of the Great Dividing Range). It covers an elongated area of 41,556 km² (16,045 sq mi) east of the Shire of Cardinia (Melbourne's outermost southeastern suburbs) between Dandenong Ranges and Mornington Peninsula, and is bounded to the north by the mountain ranges and plateaus/highlands of the High Country (which separate it from Hume region in Victoria's northeast), to the southwest by the Western Port Bay, to the south and east by the Bass Strait and the Tasman Sea, and to the east and northeast by the Black–Allan Line (the easternmost section of the Victoria/New South Wales state border).

Gippsland is divided by the Strzelecki Ranges and tributaries of the Gippsland Lakes into West Gippsland, South Gippsland, Latrobe Valley, Central Gippsland and East Gippsland. At the 2016 Australian census, Gippsland had a population of 271,266, with the principal centres Traralgon, Warragul, Drouin, Bairnsdale, Moe, Sale, Morwell, Wonthaggi, Leongatha, and Phillip Island. Gippsland is known for mining, power generation and farming as well as its tourist destinations — Phillip Island, Wilsons Promontory, the Gippsland Lakes, Walhalla, the Baw Baw Plateau, and the Strzelecki Ranges. It also includes around a hundred islands, mostly between the mainland and Tasmania.

The traditional owners are Indigenous Australians of the Gunai nation and in part of West Gippsland the Bunurong nation. Before permanent European colonisation, the area was visited by sealers and wattle bark gatherers who did not settle^{[citation needed]}. Samuel Anderson (1803–1863), a Scottish immigrant from Kirkcudbright, agriculturist and explorer, arrived in Hobart, Tasmania, in 1830, and in 1835 established a squatter agricultural settlement on the Bass River in Gippsland, the third permanent colonial settlement in Victoria (then called the Port Phillip District). His business partner Robert Massie joined him in 1837. Both had worked for the Van Diemen's Land Company at Circular Head, Tasmania. Samuel's brothers Hugh (1808–1898) and Thomas (1814–1903) arrived at Bass shortly after, where they established a successful farming venture.

Further European colonisation followed two separate expeditions to the area.

During his expedition to the South (December 1839 – May 1840) in March 1840, Polish explorer Paweł Edmund Strzelecki led an expedition across Gunai country, and gave his own names to many of their natural landmarks and places. Following these expeditions, the name "Gippsland" stuck, a name chosen by Strzelecki in honour of the New South Wales Governor, George Gipps, his sponsor.

Angus McMillan led the second European expedition between 1840, naming Gunai country "Caledonia Australis". The naming of this geographical region, however, remained the name given by P. E. Strzelecki – Gippsland.

The township of Bass was surveyed and colonised in the early 1860s.

The intensive colonisation of south Gippsland began late in the 1870s. A story of that process is told in, The land of the Lyre Bird (1920).