Inline hockey or roller hockey is a variant of hockey played on a hard, smooth surface, with players using inline skates to move and ice hockey sticks to shoot a hard, plastic puck into their opponent's goal to score points. The sport is a very fast-paced and free-flowing game and is considered a contact sport, but body checking is prohibited. There are five players including the goalkeeper from each team on the rink at a time, while teams normally consist of 16 players. There are professional leagues, one of which is the Professional Inline Hockey Association.

Unlike ice hockey, there are no blue lines or defensive zones in roller hockey. This means that, according to most rule codes, there are no offsides or icings that can occur during gameplay. This along with fewer players on the rink allows for faster gameplay. There are traditionally two 20-minute periods or four 10-minute periods with a stopped clock.

Internationally, inline hockey is represented by the World Skate which organized an annual world championship, the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) ceased to organize its own championship. In the United States, the highest governing body for the sport is USA Roller Sports (USARS). USARS is credited with the development of the present-day rules and regulations that is used throughout multiple tournament series. They organize tournaments across the United States but they are not the only tournament provider. Some of the other independent tournament providers include Amateur Athletic Union, North American Roller Championships, and the Torhs 2 Hot 4 Ice tournament series.

Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, World Skate banned Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials from its competitions, and will not stage any events in Russia or Belarus in 2022.

Some of the earliest video evidence of the sport is newsreel footage from the Giornale Luce taken in Vienna, Austria in 1938. The video shows players using inline skates with five metal wheels and a front wheel brake. Each team has four skaters plus a netminder. They are using ice hockey sticks, with taped blades, and the goals closely resemble ice hockey goals of the wire-mesh type common in Europe around that time. The game is being played with a ball on a rectangular outdoor court, which appears to be asphalt.

The exact same footage was used in a newsreel produced by British Pathé in 1938.

In the United States, the USA Roller Sports (USARS) predecessor organization was the Roller Skating Rink Operators Association (RSROA). In 1940, the RSROA published a set of roller hockey rules drawn from a booklet by the National Hockey League (NHL) which was designed to grow interest in playing hockey on roller skates. However, because of the intervention of World War II, the organization of roller hockey tournaments did not receive significant development until after this war in the late 1940s. At first skating club interest was confined to the northern tier of the United States, including the bordering Canadian cities. Puck roller hockey's spread in popularity during that period was helped along by the attention of local commercial television, which was getting its start and in desperate need for events to fill air time. The increased interest in the sport led in 1959 to the selection of a National Puck Hockey Committee to formulate special rules for the performance of puck hockey in the variety of rink sizes available to roller skates. The American Roller Hockey Association (ARHA) was formed with Joe Spillman, a roller rink operator from San Antonio, Texas as its first Commissioner. Under Spillman's direction, the sport of hockey on roller skates grew rapidly throughout the United States.

During the 1960 RSROA National Roller Skating Championships held in Little Rock, Arkansas, exhibition games for ball and puck roller hockey were held. Following these Nationals, the first full competitive season officially began in North America for roller hockey. This, of course, had puck roller hockey entirely performed on quad skates, for at that time there were no inline skates available. State and regional competitions determined the teams that would move on to the North American Championships.