The second cholera pandemic (1826–1837), also known as the Asiatic cholera pandemic, was a cholera pandemic that reached from India across Western Asia to Europe, Great Britain, and the Americas, as well as east to China and Japan. Cholera caused more deaths than any other epidemic disease in the 19th century, and as such, researchers consider it a defining epidemic disease of the century. The medical community now believes cholera to be exclusively a human disease, spread through many means of travel during the time, and transmitted through warm fecal-contaminated river waters and contaminated foods. During the second pandemic, the scientific community varied in its beliefs about the causes of cholera.

The first cholera pandemic (1817–24) began near Kolkata and spread throughout Southeast Asia to the Middle East, eastern Africa, and the Mediterranean coast. While cholera had spread across India many times previously, this outbreak went farther; it reached as far as China and the Mediterranean Sea before receding. Hundreds of thousands of people died as a result of this pandemic, including many British soldiers, which attracted European attention. This was the first of several cholera pandemics to sweep through Asia and Europe during the 19th and 20th centuries. This first pandemic spread over an unprecedented range of territory, affecting many countries throughout Asia.

Historians believe that the first pandemic had lingered in Indonesia and the Philippines in 1830.

Although not much is known about the journey of the cholera pandemic in east India, many believe that this pandemic began, like the first, with outbreaks along the Ganges Delta in India. From there, the disease spread along trade routes to cover most of India. By 1828, the disease had traveled to China. Cholera was also reported in China in 1826 and 1835, and in Japan in 1831. In 1829, Iran was apparently infected with cholera from Afghanistan.

Cholera reached the southern tips of the Ural Mountains in 1829. On 26 August 1829, the first cholera case was recorded in Orenburg with reports of outbreaks in Bugulma (7 November), Buguruslan (5 December), Menzelinsk (2 January 1830), and Belebey (6 January). With 3,500 cases including 865 fatal ones in Orenburg province, the epidemic stopped by February 1830.

The second cholera pandemic spread from Russia to the rest of Europe, claiming hundreds of thousands of lives. By 1831, the epidemic had infiltrated Russia's main cities and towns. Russian soldiers brought the disease to Poland in February 1831. There were reported to have been 250,000 cases of cholera and 100,000 deaths in Russia. In 1831, it is estimated that up to 100,000 deaths occurred in Hungary.

The cholera epidemic struck Warsaw during the November Uprising between 16 May and 20 August 1831; 4,734 people fell ill and 2,524 died. The epidemic of cholera brought to Poland and East Prussia by Russian soldiers forced Prussian authorities to close their borders to Russian transports. There were Cholera Riots in the Russian Empire caused by the government's anticholera measures.

By early 1831, frequent reports of the spread of the pandemic in Russia prompted the British government to issue quarantine orders for ships sailing from Russia to British ports. By late summer, with the disease appearing more likely to spread to Britain, its Board of Health, in accordance with the prevailing miasma theory, issued orders recommending as a preventive the burning of "decayed articles, such as rags, cordage, papers, old clothes, hangings...filth of every description removed, clothing and furniture should be submitted to copious effusions of water, and boiled in a strong ley (lye); drains and privies thoroughly cleansed by streams of water and chloride of lime...free and continued admission of fresh air to all parts of the house and furniture should be enjoined for at least a week".