The Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration was an era in the exploration of the continent of Antarctica which began at the end of the 19th century, and ended after the First World War; the Shackleton–Rowett Expedition of 1921–1922 is often cited by historians as the dividing line between the "Heroic" and "Mechanical" ages.

During the Heroic Age, the Antarctic region became the focus of international efforts that resulted in intensive scientific and geographical exploration by 17 major Antarctic expeditions launched from ten countries. The common factor in these expeditions was the limited nature of the resources available to them before advances in transport and communication technologies revolutionized the work of exploration. Each of these expeditions therefore became a feat of endurance that tested, and sometimes exceeded, the physical and mental limits of its personnel. The "heroic" label, bestowed later, recognized the adversities which had to be overcome by these pioneers, some of whom did not survive the experience: a total of 22 expedition members died during this period.

Both the geographic and magnetic South Poles were reached for the first time during the Heroic Age. The achievement of being first to the geographical pole was the primary object in many expeditions, as well as the sole rationale for Roald Amundsen's venture, which became the first to reach it in 1911. Other expeditions aimed for different objectives in different areas of the continent. As a result of all this activity, much of the continent's coastline was discovered and mapped, and significant areas of its interior were explored. The expeditions also generated large quantities of scientific data across a wide range of disciplines, the examination and analysis of which would keep the world's scientific communities busy for decades.

Exploration of the southernmost part of the globe had been an off-and-on area of interest for centuries prior to the Heroic Age, yet the sheer isolation of the region as well as its inhospitable climate and treacherous seas presented enormous practical difficulties for early maritime technology. About a century after the Age of Exploration, British explorer James Cook became one of the first explorers known to have traveled to the region. The discoveries of his second voyage (1772–1775) changed the world map forever. Prior to this expedition it was believed that a large continent known as Terra Australis occupied the majority of the Southern Hemisphere. Cook discovered that no such landmass existed, though massive ice floes prevented his reaching Antarctica proper. In the process his expedition became the first recorded voyage to cross the Antarctic Circle. He did hypothesize that, based upon the amount of ice, there must be a landmass from which the ice originated, but was convinced that if it existed this land was too far south to be either habitable or of any economic value. Subsequently, exploration of the southern regions of the world came to a halt.

Interest was renewed again between 1819 and 1843. As Europe settled after a period of war and unrest, explorers Fabian Gottlieb von Bellingshausen, John Biscoe, John Balleny, Charles Wilkes, Jules Dumont d'Urville, and James Clark Ross sought greater knowledge of the Antarctic regions. The primary goal of these explorers was to penetrate the vast barriers of sea ice that hid Antarctica proper, beginning with Bellingshausen and Mikhail Lazarev's circumnavigation of the region in 1819–1821, during which they became the first to sight and therefore officially discover mainland Antarctica, and culminating in Wilkes' discovery of Victoria Land and naming of the volcanoes now known as Mount Terror and Mount Erebus in 1840. Much early knowledge of the lands south of the Antarctic Circle was also derived from economic pursuits by sealers and whalers, including the probable first landing on mainland Antarctica by an American sealer in 1821, though whether this landing was truly the first is disputed by historians. These explorers, despite their impressive contributions to South Polar exploration, were nonetheless unable to penetrate the interior of the continent, and their discoveries instead formed a broken line of newly discovered lands along the coastline of Antarctica.

What followed this early period of exploration is what historian H. R. Mill called "the age of averted interest". Following James Clark Ross' expedition aboard the ships HMS Erebus and HMS Terror in January 1841, Ross suggested that there were no scientific discoveries worth exploration in the far south. It has been suggested that Ross' influence, as well as the widely publicized loss of the Franklin expedition in the Arctic in 1848, led to a period of disinterest, or at least an unwillingness to invest significant resources, in polar inquiry, particularly by the Royal Society. In the twenty years following Ross' return, there was a general lull internationally in Antarctic exploration.

The initial impetus for the renewed exploration of the Antarctic that became known as the Heroic Age of Antarctic Exploration is somewhat contested, as it was a vague and multifarious international movement. George von Neumayer of Hamburg, also an Antarctic explorer, helped to renew Antarctic exploration from 1861 onward while he worked in an observatory in Melbourne. His particular interests were the importance of meteorology and how more information about the South Pole could lead to more accurate weather predictions. This helps explain German involvement in Antarctic research. Another important precursor to the Heroic Age of Antarctic exploration was the Dundee Antarctic Expedition of 1892–93 in which four Dundee whaling ships travelled south to the Antarctic in search of whales instead of their usual Arctic route. The expedition was accompanied by several naturalists (including Williams Speirs Bruce) and an artist, William Gordon Burn Murdoch. The publications (both scientific and popular) and exhibitions that resulted did much to reignite public interest in the Antarctic. The performance of the whaling ships was also crucial in the decision to build RRS Discovery in Dundee.

Another, particularly British, impetus more closely tied to the period is a lecture given by John Murray titled "The Renewal of Antarctic Exploration", given to the Royal Geographical Society in London, on 27 November 1893. Murray advocated that research into the Antarctic should be organised to "resolve the outstanding geographical questions still posed in the south". Shortly prior to this, in 1887, the Royal Geographic Society had instated an Antarctic Committee which successfully incited many whalers to explore the southern regions of the world and foregrounded the lecture given by Murray. In August 1895, the Sixth International Geographical Congress in London passed a general resolution calling on scientific societies throughout the world to promote the cause of Antarctic exploration "in whatever ways seem to them most effective". Such work, the resolution argued, would "bring additions to almost every branch of science". The Congress was addressed by the Norwegian Carsten Borchgrevink, who had just returned from a whaling expedition during which he had become one of the first people to set foot on the Antarctic mainland. During his address, Borchgrevink outlined plans for a full-scale pioneering Antarctic expedition, to be based at Cape Adare.