Pearl Jam is an American rock band formed in Seattle, Washington, in 1990. One of the key bands in the grunge movement of the early 1990s, Pearl Jam has outsold and outlasted many of its contemporaries and is considered one of the most influential bands from that decade, dubbed "the most popular American rock and roll band of the '90s". The band has consisted of guitarists Stone Gossard and Mike McCready, bassist Jeff Ament, and vocalist and guitarist Eddie Vedder since its formation. The band had a revolving cast of drummers throughout their early days, including Dave Krusen, Matt Chamberlain, Dave Abbruzzese, and Jack Irons. The band's longest-tenured drummer was Matt Cameron, who joined the band in 1998 and departed in 2025. Keyboardist Boom Gaspar has also featured with the band as a session and touring musician since 2002.

Formed after the demise of Gossard and Ament's previous bands, Green River and Mother Love Bone, Pearl Jam broke into the mainstream with their debut album Ten (1991). Ten stayed on the US Billboard 200 chart for nearly five years, and has gone on to become one of the highest-selling rock albums ever, being certified 13× platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Released in 1993, Pearl Jam's second album, Vs., sold over 950,000 copies in its first week of release, setting the record for most copies of an album sold in its first week of release at the time. Their third album, Vitalogy (1994), became the second-fastest-selling CD in history at the time, with more than 877,000 units sold in its first week.

Pearl Jam's members often shunned popular music industry practices such as making music videos or participating in interviews. The band unsuccessfully sued Ticketmaster in 1994, claiming it had monopolized the concert-ticket market. In 2006, Rolling Stone described the band as having "spent much of the past decade deliberately tearing apart their own fame".

Pearl Jam had sold more than 100 million albums worldwide by 2018, including nearly 32 million albums in the United States by 2012, making them one of the best-selling bands of all time. Pearl Jam was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2017 in its first year of eligibility. They were ranked eighth in a readers' poll by Rolling Stone magazine in its "Top Ten Live Acts of All Time" issue. Throughout its career, the band has promoted wider social and political issues, such as abortion rights sentiments and opposition to George W. Bush's presidency, with Vedder acting as its spokesman on these issues.

Stone Gossard and Jeff Ament were members of Seattle-based grunge band Green River during the mid-1980s. Green River toured and recorded to moderate success, but disbanded in 1987 due to a stylistic division between the pair and bandmate Mark Arm. In late 1987, Gossard and Ament began playing with Malfunkshun vocalist Andrew Wood, eventually organizing the band Mother Love Bone. In 1988 and 1989, the band recorded and toured to increasing interest. PolyGram signed the band in late 1988. Mother Love Bone's debut album, Apple, was released in August 1990, five months after Wood died of a heroin overdose.

Ament and Gossard were devastated by the death of Wood and the resulting demise of Mother Love Bone. Gossard spent his time afterwards writing material that was harder-edged than what he had been doing previously. After a few months, Gossard started practicing with fellow Seattle guitarist Mike McCready, whose band, Shadow, had broken up; McCready in turn encouraged Gossard to reconnect with Ament. After practicing for a while, the trio sent out a five-song demo tape in order to find a singer and a drummer. They gave former Red Hot Chili Peppers drummer Jack Irons the demo to see if he would be interested in joining the band and to distribute the demo to anyone he felt might fit the lead vocal position.

Irons passed on the invitation but gave the demo to his friend Eddie Vedder. Vedder was the lead vocalist for the San Diego band Bad Radio and worked part-time at a gas station. He listened to the tape shortly before going surfing, where lyrics came to him. He then recorded the vocals to three of the songs ("Alive", "Once", and "Footsteps") in what he later described as a "mini-opera" titled Mamasan. Vedder sent the tape with his vocals back to the three Seattle musicians, who were impressed enough to fly Vedder up to Seattle for an audition. Within a week, Vedder had joined the band.

With the addition of Dave Krusen on drums, the band took the name Mookie Blaylock, in reference to the then-active basketball player. The band played its first official show at the Off Ramp Café in Seattle on October 22, 1990. They opened for Alice in Chains at the Moore Theatre in Seattle on December 22, 1990, and served as the opening act for the band's Facelift tour in 1991. Mookie Blaylock soon signed to Epic Records and renamed themselves Pearl Jam. In an early promotional interview, Vedder said that the name "Pearl Jam" was a reference to his great-grandmother Pearl, who was married to a Native American and had a special recipe for peyote-laced jam. In a 2006 cover story for Rolling Stone, Vedder admitted that this story was "total bullshit", but added that he did have a great-grandmother named Pearl. Ament and McCready explained that Ament came up with "pearl", and that the band later settled on Pearl Jam after attending a Neil Young concert in which he extended his songs as improvisations (i.e. "jams") of 15–20 minutes in length.