Ombre (from Spanish hombre 'man', pronounced "omber") or l'Hombre is a fast-moving seventeenth-century trick-taking card game for three players. It has been described as "the most successful card game ever invented."

Its history began in Spain around the end of the 16th century as a four-person game. It is one of the earliest card games known in Europe and by far the most classic game of its type, directly ancestral to Euchre, Boston and Solo Whist. Despite its difficult rules, complicated point score and strange foreign terms, it swept Europe in the last quarter of the 17th century, becoming Lomber and L'Hombre in Germany, Lumbur in Austria and Ombre (originally pronounced 'umber') in England, occupying a position of prestige similar to contract bridge today. Ombre eventually developed into a whole family of related games such as the four-hand Quadrille, three-hand Tritrille, five-hand Quintille and six-hand Sextille, as well as German Solo, Austrian Préférence and Swedish Vira, itself "one of the most complex card games ever devised." Other games borrowed features from Ombre such as bidding; for example, the gambling game of Bête, formerly known as Homme, and the tarot game of Taroc l'Hombre.

The historical importance of Ombre in the field of playing cards is the fact that it was the first card game in which a trump suit was established by bidding rather than by the random process of turning the first card of the stock. This game developed from Triunfo, though it was from L'Hombre that the idea of bidding was adopted into other card games such as Skat, and Tarot, which owes Hombre a good portion of its betting system as well.

Ombre's precise origins are unknown, but it reached England and France at about the same time. The earliest French reference dates to 1671 and it is recorded in England as early as 1661 with a set of rules being published in 1662. The game continued to be in vogue in almost every corner of Europe from the late 17th through the 18th centuries.

As with most games, Ombre acquired many variations of increasing complexity over the years, until its popularity was eclipsed by the second quarter of the 18th century by a new four player French variant called Quadrille, later displaced by the English Whist. Other lines of descent and hybridization produced three-handed games like Preference and four-handed ones such as German Solo and Mediateur. Under the name Tresillo, it survived in parts of Spain during the nineteenth century, as Voltarete in Portugal and Brazil, as Rocambor in countries such as Bolivia, Peru, and Colombia in the twentieth century, and it is still played as L'Hombre in Denmark, mostly in Jutland and on the island of Funen, where it is organized by the Danish Hombre Union (Dansk L'hombre-Union), as well as in the Faroe Islands (as Lumbur) and Iceland (as Lomber). Today, Tresillo survives in Spain and Rocambor is still reported in South America (Bolivia and Peru). It may still exist in Portugal under the name Mediator.

Daines Barrington, English antiquary and naturalist, says that Ombre was probably introduced in England by Catherine of Braganza, the Queen of Charles II, as Edmund Waller, the court poet, had a poem entitled "On a Card Torn at Ombre by the Queen". She was such a keen player, as were so many members of English high society by the end of 1674, that the Lower House of Parliament proposed to pass an Act against the playing of Ombre, or at least to limit the stakes at £5, a proposition received as "ridiculous" at that time. But a small book of rules, The Royal game of the ombre written at the request of divers honourable persons, published in London in 1660, would support the inference that the game was known in England before the Restoration.

In the late 18th century, the three player version of its offshoot, German Solo, was often referred to as German Ombre (Dütsch Lumber or Deutsche L'Hombre), a game popular with "the lower classes" in northern Germany.

Ombre takes its name from the Spanish phrase originally used by the player who declared trumps: Yo soy el hombre, i.e., "I am the man". It appears to be merely an alteration of the game Primero and it is to be presumed that it was invented prior to the publication of the Dictionary of Sebastián de Covarrubias in 1611, although it makes no mention of it. The spelling changed from "Hombre" to "Ombre" in English due to a misunderstanding that the name came from the French ombre meaning "shadow."