A jubilee is a special year of remission of sins, debts and universal pardon. In the Book of Leviticus, a jubilee year is mentioned as occurring every 50th year (after 49 years, 7x7, as per Leviticus 25:8) during which slaves and prisoners would be freed, debts would be forgiven and the mercies of God would be particularly manifest.

In Western Christianity, the tradition dates to 1300, when Pope Boniface VIII convoked a holy year, following which ordinary jubilees have generally been celebrated every 25 or 50 years, with extraordinary jubilees in addition depending on need. Catholic jubilees, particularly in the Latin Church, generally involve a pilgrimage to a sacred site, normally the city of Rome.

The most recent holy year was the Extraordinary Jubilee of Mercy (2015–2016). The present ordinary Jubilee Year of Hope commenced on 24 December 2024.

In Jewish tradition, the jubilee year was a time of joy, the year of remission or universal pardon. Leviticus 25:10 reads "Thou shalt sanctify the fiftieth year, and shalt proclaim remission to all the inhabitants of thy land: for it is the year of jubilee."

The same concept forms the fundamental idea of the Christian jubilee. The number 50 was specially associated in the early 13th century with the idea of remission. The translation of the body of Thomas Becket took place in the year 1220, 50 years after his martyrdom. The sermon on that occasion was preached by Cardinal Stephen Langton, who told his hearers that this coincidence was meant by Providence to recall "the mystical virtue of the number fifty, which, as every reader of the sacred page is aware, is the number of remission."

In the Chronicle of Alberic of Three Fountains, under the year 1208 (rather than 1200), is this brief entry: "It is said that this year was celebrated as the fiftieth year, or the year of jubilee and remission, in the Roman Court." In Ancient Rome, it was said the jubilee was the celebration coinciding with the centenaries since the founding of Rome; this pagan celebration was co-opted into the tradition of the jubilee.

In Roman Catholic tradition, a jubilee or Holy Year is a year of forgiveness of sins and also the punishment due to sin. It is a year of reconciliation between adversaries, of conversion and receiving the Sacrament of Reconciliation, "... and consequently of solidarity, hope, justice, commitment to serve God with joy and in peace with our brothers and sisters". A jubilee can be ordinary if it falls after the set period of years or extraordinary if it is proclaimed for some outstanding event.

In the face of great suffering caused by wars and diseases such as the plague, thousands of pilgrims came to Rome at Christmas in 1299. Cardinal Giacomo Gaetani Stefaneschi, the contemporary and counsellor of Pope Boniface VIII, and author of a treatise on the first Christian jubilee, noted that the proclamation of the jubilee owed its origin to the statements of certain aged pilgrims who persuaded Boniface that great indulgences had been granted to all pilgrims in Rome about a hundred years before.