The Albanian National Awakening (Albanian: Rilindja or Rilindja Kombëtare), commonly known as the Albanian Renaissance or Albanian Revival, is a period throughout the 19th and 20th century of a cultural, political, and social movement in the Albanian history where the Albanian people gathered strength to establish an independent cultural and political life, as well as the country of Albania.

Prior to the rise of nationalism, Albania remained under the rule of the Ottoman Empire for almost five centuries and the Ottoman authorities suppressed any expression of national unity or institutional national conscience by the Albanian people. There is some debate among experts regarding when the Albanian nationalist movement should be considered to have started. Some sources attribute its origins to the revolts against centralisation in the 1830s, others to the publication of the first attempt by Naum Veqilharxhi at a standardized alphabet for Albanian in 1844, or to the collapse of the League of Prizren during the Eastern Crisis in 1881. Various compromise positions between these three theses have also emerged, such as one view positing that Albanian nationalism had foundations that dated earlier but "consolidated" as a movement during the Great Eastern Crisis (1876–1881).

Another view is that Albanian nationalism's roots "sprouted" in the reforms of the first decades of the 19th century, and that Albanian nationalism emerged properly in the 1830s and 1840s, when it was a romantic movement for societal reform that was initially mainly driven by Albanians publishing from abroad; it transformed into an overt political national movement in the 1870s. On 20 December 1912, the Conference of Ambassadors in London recognized an independent Albania within its present-day borders.

When the central authority of the Ottoman Empire and the timar system weakened, anarchy emerged in the Albanian-populated region of the empire, and in the late 18th century, two Albanian centers of power arose: the Pashalik of Shkodra under the Bushati family; and the Pashalik of Yanina under Ali Pasha of Tepelenë. Both cooperated with and defied the Sublime Porte as their interests required. The Albanian people (both Muslim and Christian) had a great influence in the politics and events of the late 18th century and early 19th century Ottoman Empire, and in particular they played a key role in the Greek War of Independence, on both sides of the war. Pursuing their own interests, they acted after their own agenda, regardless of the Porte's demands.

The rulers of the increasingly independent Albanian Pashaliks were Albanian military leaders who were at first awarded for their loyalty to the Ottoman Empire, and who however exploited the weakness of the Sublime Porte to exercise in northern and southern Albania their gathered military and political power. While they are clearly not described as champions of national fight aiming at an independent and united Albania, but regarded as political opportunists within the context of the Ottomam Empire, nevertheless these Albanian rulers established separate states by challenging the authority of the Sublime Porte, and Ali Pasha of Yanina, in particular, also established foreign diplomatic relations with Napoleonic France and with Britain. British travellers who had met Ali Pasha noted that Ali described himself and the Albanians as friends of the British nation. Furthermore, Albanians were seen as living independently and without oppression by the Porte, meanwhile Ali Pasha was aiming to form some kind of alliance with the British government. Ali's separatist initiative, by conceiving his territory in increasingly independent terms referring to it as "Albania", eventually aiming at creating an independent Albanian–Greek state, revealed the vulnerability of Ottoman power. The Albanian rule of the Pashalik of Yanina as well as that of the Pashalik of Scutari caused the emergence of a sense of ethnic belonging among the Albanian people, which consequently led to an enduring hostility of Albanians against the Sublime Porte, also by seeking autonomy from its central power.

After the fall of the Yanina Pashalik, the power and influence of the Albanian beys had faded. The remaining beys thus attempted to restore their rule. An assembly was held in Berat in 1828. In this Convention, the leaders were Zylyftar Poda and Shahin bej Delvina. The Ottoman Empire tried to prevent the rise of local beys, which presented a menace to centralised power. In 1830, the Sublime Porte sent an expeditionary force under the command of Reşid Mehmed Pasha to suppress the local Albanian beys. On hearing the news of the Ottoman forces' arrival, the three most powerful local chiefs, Zylyftar Poda, accompanied by the remains of Ali Pasha's faction, Veli Bey (whose power base was around Yannina), and Arslan Bey, along with other less powerful beys, began to prepare their forces to resist a probable Ottoman attack. Realising the seriousness of the situation and the danger of a general uprising, Reşid Mehmed Pasha invited the Albanian beys to a meeting on the pretext that they would be rewarded for their loyalty to the Porte. The beys however, were all killed along with their guards.

The last Albanian pashalik to fall was the Scutari Pashalik. The Bushati dynasty rule ended when an Ottoman army under Mehmed Reshid Pasha besieged the Rozafa Castle and forced Mustafa Reshiti to surrender (1831). The Albanian defeat ended a planned alliance between the Albanian beys and the Bosnian nobility, who were similarly seeking autonomy. Instead of the pashalik, the vilayets of Scutari and that of Kosovo were created.

By removing the Timar system, the Sublime Porte intended to strengthen its central government and reclaim the power of the Empire which had been severely weakened due to economic and social backwardness, from the exploitative system and from the ongoing uprisings of peoples. Reforms began to be implemented in Albania since the 1830s. They gave a blow to the ranks of the old military feudal class which had been weakened from Ottoman expeditions from 1822 to 1831. Parts of the feudal heads that had launched revolts were eliminated, others were exiled and those who could, had escaped from the country. All their properties were declared state-owned. This gave rise to new landowners who had connections to the Sublime Porte. Due to the Ottoman occupation, the ideology of Nationalism developed with difficulty and was limited in Albanian-inhabited territories in the Balkan. They found more favorable development conditions outside, in the capital of the Empire, Istanbul, Italy, other Balkan countries etc. The national ideas became apparent via popular uprisings against the Tanzimat reforms, but they still did not reach a period to be formulated in full policy of the National Movement. They were more expressed with literary works and studies of the Albanian people, history, language and culture. In their writings, the Rilindas fought to invoke feelings of love for the country by exalting patriotic traditions and episodes of history, especially that of the Skanderbeg era and folk culture; They devoted a lot of attention to native language and Albanian schools as a means to affirm individuality and national vindication.