The Hayward Gallery is an art gallery within the Southbank Centre in central London, England and part of an area of major arts venues on the South Bank of the River Thames. It is sited adjacent to the other Southbank Centre buildings (the Royal Festival Hall and the Queen Elizabeth Hall/Purcell Room) and also the National Theatre and BFI Southbank repertory cinema. Following a rebranding of the South Bank Centre to Southbank Centre in early 2007, the Hayward Gallery was known as the Hayward until early 2011.

The Hayward Gallery was built by Higgs and Hill and opened on 9 July 1968. Its massing and extensive use of exposed concrete construction are features typical of Brutalist architecture. The initial concept was designed, with the Queen Elizabeth Hall and Purcell Room, as an addition to the Southbank Centre arts complex by team leader Norman Engleback, assisted by John Attenborough, Ron Herron and Warren Chalk, two members of the later founded group Archigram, of the Department of Architecture and Civic Design of the Greater London Council. Warren Chalk then developed the site plan and connective first floor walkways, while Ron Herron worked on the acoustics for the Queen Elizabeth Hall. Alan Waterhouse, then Dennis Crompton, worked on the designs for the Hayward. The building is named after Sir Isaac Hayward, a former leader of the London County Council, the GLC's predecessor. Joanna Drew was the founding director; Ralph Rugoff has been director since 2006.

The Hayward does not house a permanent collection. Instead, it hosts three or four major temporary exhibitions of modern or contemporary artworks each year. From 1968 to 1986, the gallery was managed by the Arts Council of Great Britain, but management of the gallery then passed to Southbank Centre. The gallery is also the base of Arts Council England's National Touring Exhibitions programme, as it was, until 2002, of the Arts Council Collection. Unlike British galleries with permanent collections who receive local or central government funding, but in common with other temporary exhibitions at the London public galleries, the Hayward charges admission fees. The Hayward's exhibition policy embraces visual art from all periods: past shows having included the works of Leonardo da Vinci to Edvard Munch and beyond. The programme, however, has tended to concentrate on surveys of contemporary art which complement the spaces and powerful concrete structure of the building, such as those of works by Dan Flavin and Antony Gormley.

It has hosted two surveys of works from the Arts Council Collection: British Art 1940–1980 and How to Improve the World: 60 Years of British Art.

The design brief was for five gallery spaces, two levels of indoor galleries and three outdoor sculpture courts (the massive concrete trays at the upper level) in order to house the Arts Council collection. The intended outdoor display of sculpture against the background of the London skyline appears to have been impractical and the sculpture courts have been little used and usually closed to the public until the Blind Light exhibition of works by Antony Gormley in 2007.

The two levels of the gallery open to the public are linked by a pair of cast concrete staircases. These staircases, and lavatories at an intermediate level, are accommodated in a concrete box in between the eastern and western parts of the indoor galleries. One of these staircases also runs down to street level with access (now emergency only) to Belvedere Road; the other extends down into the private entrance foyer, at lower level, on the north side of the building. This almost hidden private entrance is located below the foyer and external walkway on the north facade, above the car park and near the overhanging Purcell Room auditorium. Screens formerly advertised the National Film Theatre (the BFI Southbank from 2007) and Museum of the Moving Image enclosed the car park by the central access road. They were removed in 2008 giving a more open feel to the ground level area at the western end.

The building originally had a very small main foyer area with cast aluminium doors similar to those of the Queen Elizabeth Hall. In 2003, the foyer of the building was remodelled with a larger glass-fronted foyer, designed by the Haworth Tompkins architectural practice, and including a new oval shaped glass pavilion designed by Dan Graham above a new cafe in the projecting former office space at the east end. A shop had been added earlier inside the north-west end of the lower gallery.

The two upper galleries can use heavily filtered natural light from the glass pyramids on their flat roofs. Three concrete towers run vertically through the middle of the structure and contain the passenger lift, service lift and service duct. Between 1972 and 2008 a kinetic light sculpture, which responds to wind force, stood on the roof of the passenger lift tower. This famous London landmark was designed and built by Philip Vaughan and Roger Dainton as a way to attract visitors to the gallery. It was removed in order for renovation to take place which involved replacing the original neon lighting with LEDs, but subsequently it was decided not to reinstall it.