The SEC Championship Game is an annual American football game that determines the Southeastern Conference's season champion. For its first 32 seasons, the championship game pitted the Eastern Division regular season champion against the Western Division regular season champion. With the SEC eliminating football divisions after the 2023 season, the game now features the top two teams in the conference standings. The game is regularly played on the first Saturday of December. The first two editions of the game were held at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama, with all subsequent games being held in Atlanta since 1994, first at the Georgia Dome, and at its replacement Mercedes-Benz Stadium since 2017.

Eleven of the sixteen current SEC members have played in the SEC Championship Game, with Kentucky, Ole Miss, Texas A&M, Vanderbilt, and Oklahoma being the exceptions. During the divisional era, the overall series was led 19–13 by the Western Division.

While eleven SEC members have played in the game, only six have won: Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, Auburn, and LSU. Each of these teams has won the championship multiple times. South Carolina, Mississippi State, Missouri, Arkansas, and Texas have played in the game but failed to win it.

The SEC was the first NCAA conference in any division to hold a football championship game that was exempt from NCAA regular-season game limits. This was made possible in 1987, when the NCAA membership approved a proposal sponsored by the Division II Pennsylvania State Athletic Conference and Central Intercollegiate Athletic Association allowing any conference with at least 12 football members to split into divisions and stage a championship game between the divisional winners. The SEC took advantage of this rule by adding the University of Arkansas and the University of South Carolina in 1992, bringing the conference membership to 12, and splitting into two football divisions. The format has since been adopted by other conferences to decide their football champion (the first being the Big 12 in 1996).

The first two SEC Championship Games were held at Legion Field in Birmingham, Alabama. From 1994 until 2016, the game was played at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. Following the closure and subsequent demolition of the Georgia Dome in 2017, the SEC Championship Game remained in Atlanta, moving to the new Mercedes-Benz Stadium that replaced the Georgia Dome under a ten-year contract. In November 2023, the SEC signed a five-year extension with Mercedes-Benz Stadium with an additional five-year option which will get the game at the stadium until 2032.

The SEC Championship Game has been played on the first Saturday of December with two exceptions. The 2001 edition was moved to the second Saturday in December so games cancelled during the week of the September 11 attacks could be rescheduled on the first Saturday. The 2020 edition was pushed back to the third week of December as part of the adjustments in the 2020 season for the COVID-19 pandemic.

With the SEC expanding to 16 teams with the 2024 arrival of Oklahoma and Texas, it announced on June 1, 2023, that it would eliminate its football divisions at that time. Championship games from 2024 forward will feature the top two teams in the conference standings.

Between 2006 and 2013 the winner of the SEC Championship Game went on to play in the BCS National Championship Game eight straight years, posting a 6–2 record. Since 2014, the SEC Championship Game winner has gone on to appear in the College Football Playoff every season, posting a 8–2 record in the national semi-final and a 4–4 record in the College Football Playoff National Championship. Two of these losses in the National Championship were to another team from the SEC, including a rematch of the 2021 SEC Championship game in the eventual National Championship.