Sciences Po (French pronunciation: [sjɑ̃s po]) or Sciences Po Paris, also known as the Paris Institute of Political Studies (French: Institut d'études politiques de Paris), is a public research university located in Paris, France, that holds the status of grande école and the legal status of grand établissement. The university's undergraduate program is taught on the Paris campus as well as on the decentralized campuses in Dijon, Le Havre, Menton, Nancy, Poitiers and Reims, each with their own academic program focused on a geopolitical part of the world. While Sciences Po historically specialized in political science, it progressively expanded to other social sciences such as economics, law, and sociology.

The school was established in 1872 by Émile Boutmy as the École libre des sciences politiques in the aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War as a private institution to form a new French elite that would be knowledgeable in political science, law and history. It was a pioneer in the emergence and development of political science as an academic field in France. Following World War II, the school was nationalized and re-established as a public institution. As of 2021, 80% of Sciences Po graduates are employed in the private sector.

Sciences Po Paris is the only Institute of Political Sciences in France allowed to refer to itself with the epithet "Sciences Po" without indicating the name of the city where their headquarters are located, under a legal agreement with the other institutes. They are allowed to use the term "Sciences Po" to refer to themselves only when followed by the names of the cities where they are located, such as "Sciences Po Lille" or "Sciences Po Grenoble."

The institute is a member of the Association of Professional Schools of International Affairs and The European University of Social Sciences.

Sciences Po was established in December 1871 as the École libre des sciences politiques (ELSP) by a group of French intellectuals, politicians and businessmen led by Émile Boutmy, including Hippolyte Taine, Ernest Renan, Albert Sorel and Paul Leroy Beaulieu. The creation of the school was in response to widespread fears that the inadequacy of the education of the French political elite corps would diminish the country's international stature, as France grappled with a series of crises, including its defeat in the 1870 Franco-Prussian War, the demise of Napoleon III's regime, and the upheaval and massacre resulting from the Paris Commune. The founders of the school sought to reform the training of the French political and economic elite by establishing a new "breeding ground where nearly all the major, non-technical state commissioners were trained." His innovative intellectual axis was to teach contemporary history, whereas political elites had only been taught ancient humanities for centuries, which they could still learn in universities at the same time.

The École acquired a major role in France's political system. From 1901 to 1935, 92.5% of entrants to the Grands corps de l'État, the most powerful and prestigious administrative bodies in the French Civil Service, had studied there (this figure includes people who took civil service examination preparatory classes at Sciences Po but did not earn a degree and, in general, students were taking classes there on top of earning a degree at the University of Paris, in particular the Law Faculty).

Other countries created similar schools in the following century. In 1875, the Istituto Cesare Alfieri [it] in Italy (now part of the University of Florence), at the end of the century, the École libre des sciences Politiques et Sociales in Belgium (not existing any more), the Deutsche Hochschule für Politik in Germany, the Columbia School of Political Science (now merged into the Columbia Graduate School of Arts and Sciences), the London School of Economics in the United Kingdom, and, after WW1, for the School of Foreign Service from Georgetown University in the United States and the Geneva Graduate Institute in Switzerland.

The connection between Sciences Po and French institutions meant that the school also played a key role in the apparatus of the French colonial empires. In 1886, the university established a colonial studies program with the goal of training students to take on professions in the colonial administration in a way that "propagates [...] a more scientific and international colonialism". Many professors and members of the ELSP administration, such as Paul Leroy-Beaulieu, chair in colonial affairs at ELSP, Joseph Chailley-Bert, Jules Cambon, Charles Jonnart, Auguste Louis Albéric d’Arenberg and Ernest Roume, were also closely linked to or worked directly with the colonial government. The colonial branch of ELSP closed in 1893 after a state-sponsored Colonial School was created in 1889; however positions in the administrations of French colonies and protectorates continued to accept graduates from the ELSP.