The Brooklyn Rail is an American publication and platform for the arts, culture, humanities, and politics, based in Brooklyn, New York. It features in-depth critical essays, fiction, poetry, as well as interviews with artists, critics, and curators, and reviews of art, music, dance, film, books, and theater.

The Rail's print publication is published ten times a year and distributed to universities, galleries, museums, bookstores, and other organizations around the world free of charge. The Rail operates a small press called Rail Editions, which publishes literary translations, poetry, and art criticism. In addition to the small press, the Rail has also organized panel discussions, readings, film screenings, music and dance performances, and has curated exhibitions through a program called Rail Curatorial Projects. Notable among these exhibitions is "Artists Need to Create on the Same Scale that Society Has the Capacity to Destroy: Mare Nostrum" co-curated by Francesca Pietropaolo and Phong Bui, an official Collateral Event of the 2019 Venice Biennale, which ran at Chiesa delle Penitenti, Venice from May to November 2019.

The Brooklyn Rail's website states that the publication "provides an independent forum for arts, culture, and politics throughout New York City and far beyond," and that it is "committed to supporting artists in their journey and elevating the important role that the arts and humanities play in shaping our society."

Originally distributed as reading material for commuters on the L-train between Manhattan and Brooklyn, the Brooklyn Rail began as a small broadsheet with opinions printed in four columns in 1998. The founding editors included Joe Maggio, Christian Viveros-Fauné, Theodore Hamm, and Patrick Walsh. The group first began publishing the paper as a weekly double-sided sheet. Smith designed the Rail's logo.

By 2000, the journal had quickly grown into a full-format publication, with Phong Bui and then-editor Theodore Hamm sharing oversight duties. Bui comments that it's largely due to support from the arts community, and funding from art foundations, that has made it possible for the journal to maintain its creative autonomy. Hamm notes that the Rail's non-profit funding, largely provided by private donors, has preserved the magazine's original aspiration to publish "a crucible of slanted opinions, artfully delivered."

Editors have included Williams Cole, Christian Parenti, Heather Rogers, Daniel Baird, Emily DeVoti, Alan Lockwood, Ellen Pearlman, Donald Breckenridge, Monica de la Torre, and many more.

As of 2017, the Rail had interviewed over four hundred artists. A compilation of artist interviews, called Tell Me Something Good: Artist Interviews from The Brooklyn Rail, was published in 2017. Interviews include Richard Serra and Brice Marden to Alex Da Corte and House of Ladosha. The book was coedited by Jarrett Earnest and Lucas Zwirner and published through David Zwirner Books The collection includes an introduction by Phong Bui and a selection of hand-drawn portraits he has made of those he has interviewed over the years.

The Miami Rail is an editorially independent expansion of The Brooklyn Rail founded by Nina Johnson Milewski with Brooklyn Rail editor Phong Bui and support from the Knight Foundation.