In relativistic classical field theories of gravitation, particularly general relativity, an energy condition is a generalization of the statement "the energy density of a region of space cannot be negative" in a relativistically phrased mathematical formulation. There are multiple possible alternative ways to express such a condition such that can be applied to the matter content of the theory. The hope is then that any reasonable matter theory will satisfy this condition or at least will preserve the condition if it is satisfied by the starting conditions.

Energy conditions are not physical constraints per se, but are rather mathematically imposed boundary conditions that attempt to capture a belief that "energy should be positive". Many energy conditions are known to not correspond to physical reality—for example, the observable effects of dark energy are well known to violate the strong energy condition.

In general relativity, energy conditions are often used (and required) in proofs of various important theorems about black holes, such as the no hair theorem or the laws of black hole thermodynamics.

In general relativity and allied theories, the distribution of the mass, momentum, and stress due to matter and to any non-gravitational fields is described by the energy–momentum tensor (or matter tensor) ${\displaystyle T^{ab}}$. However, the Einstein field equation in itself does not specify what kinds of states of matter or non-gravitational fields are admissible in a spacetime model. This is both a strength, since a good general theory of gravitation should be maximally independent of any assumptions concerning non-gravitational physics, and a weakness, because without some further criterion the Einstein field equation admits putative solutions with properties most physicists regard as unphysical, i.e. too weird to resemble anything in the real universe even approximately.

The energy conditions represent such criteria. Roughly speaking, they crudely describe properties common to all (or almost all) states of matter and all non-gravitational fields that are well-established in physics while being sufficiently strong to rule out many unphysical "solutions" of the Einstein field equation.

Mathematically speaking, the most apparent distinguishing feature of the energy conditions is that they are essentially restrictions on the eigenvalues and eigenvectors of the matter tensor. A more subtle but no less important feature is that they are imposed eventwise, at the level of tangent spaces. Therefore, they have no hope of ruling out objectionable global features, such as closed timelike curves.

In order to understand the statements of the various energy conditions, one must be familiar with the physical interpretation of some scalar and vector quantities constructed from arbitrary timelike or null vectors and the matter tensor.

First, a unit timelike vector field ${\displaystyle {\vec {X}}}$ can be interpreted as defining the world lines of some family of (possibly noninertial) ideal observers. Then the scalar field