Meteora is the second studio album by American rock band Linkin Park, released on March 25, 2003, through Warner Bros. Records. It followed Reanimation, a collaboration album which featured remixes of songs included on their 2000 debut studio album Hybrid Theory. The album was produced by the band alongside Don Gilmore. The title Meteora is taken from the Greek Orthodox monasteries originally bearing the name. Meteora has a similar sound to Hybrid Theory, as described by critics, and the album took almost a year to be recorded. It is the first Linkin Park studio album to feature bassist Dave "Phoenix" Farrell after he rejoined the band in 2000 following his temporary touring with other bands.

Meteora debuted at number one on the Billboard 200, selling over 810,000 copies in its first week. Linkin Park released singles from Meteora for over a year, including "Somewhere I Belong", "Faint", "Numb", "From the Inside", and "Breaking the Habit". "Lying from You" was released in March 2004 as a promotional single. Meteora received generally positive reviews, although some critics felt the album's style was too similar to its predecessor.

Meteora has sold around 16 million copies worldwide, making it the 8th best-selling album of the 21st century. It is certified 8× Platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). It was ranked number 36 on the Billboard Top 200 Albums of the 2000s. Some songs from the album were remixed with some of Jay-Z's songs for the EP Collision Course (2004). "Session" was nominated for Best Rock Instrumental Performance at the 46th Grammy Awards.

In February 2023, it was announced that the band would release a 20th anniversary edition of Meteora on April 7, 2023. They released a previously never-before-heard outtake from the album titled "Lost" as the lead single of the reissue. In 2025, Rae Lemeshow-Barooshian of Loudwire included the album in her list of "the top 50 nu-metal albums of all time", ranking it sixth.

In 2000, Linkin Park worked with music producer Don Gilmore to record and release their debut album, Hybrid Theory. Initial writing for a second album dated back to early 2001, while still touring in support of Hybrid Theory. The band had written around eighty different demos during their Hybrid Theory World Tour and LP Underground Tour, within the span of just eight months. Rough song ideas written then would find its way to the final album; notably the intro for "Somewhere I Belong". Lead singer Chester Bennington recorded guitar notes for it, but found it too folk rock sounding. However, bandmates Mike Shinoda and Joe Hahn reworked it, adding effects to it, and then played it backwards, molding it into something the band was happy with. As explained by Shinoda: "Since I reversed it, it was playing 4-3-2-1. The chord progression was reversed. Then I cut it into four pieces, and I played it 1-2-3-4. And that's why it has that sweeping sound."

We really learned the meaning of pressure. But it wasn't pressure from outside people. It was artistic pressure from ourselves. You can't control the commercial success of a record, so there's no point in investing energy in that. But the quality of your record is entirely up to you, and you can't blame anyone else if you write crappy songs. Before we did Meteora, I listened to Hybrid Theory and Reanimation, and I was like, "Dude, I'm really proud of these records. I don't remember how we did it, and I don't know how we're gonna do it again. We're kind of screwed." Then, fortunately, we were able to invest ourselves fully in the process for 18 months, and that helped us make a really great record.

Prior to releasing a second album, the band instead chose to release a remix album, Reanimation, in 2002, produced by Shinoda. The experience led the band to want to co-produce their second album, while still working with Gilmore, hoping to expand on the sound of Hybrid Theory with more experimental ideas. In early 2002, after the touring, the writing continued in Mike's home studio, pre-production of the album began there. The band worked in pairs during the writing process, whereas Shinoda was always involved in all the songs. The recording of the songs mainly used Pro Tools, whereas the band used the traditional method of writing, in main studio. In June, pre-production terminated and the band headed for main production. The band finalized Don Gilmore as their producer. When Reanimation was released, the band had started to write the main content. Drummer Rob Bourdon spent eight hours a day in the studio for the recording of the album. By August, the band entered NRG Studios as Bennington also began writing songs with the band.

We knew what we wanted, and we knew how to execute to a certain degree. However, we were also just going for it. We didn't really care about what anybody else was doing. We also didn't care whether or not the songs fit together stylistically as a whole or a collection of songs. It was more like, "This riff is sick!" Then, we'd just scream over it, and the next song would be a mid-tempo ballad and you'd sing the way that song needed to be sang. We were testing. We were students in college. We were in the lab, and we happened to stumble across something everybody liked and it worked. I think Meteora was an extension of that.