Touch (also known as touch football or touch rugby league) is a variant of rugby league that is conducted under the direction of the Federation of International Touch (FIT). Though it shares similarities and history with rugby league, it is recognised as a sport in its own right due to its differences which have been developed over the sport's lifetime.

Touch is a variation of rugby league with the tackling of opposing players replaced by a touch. As touches must be made with minimal force, touch is therefore considered a limited-contact sport. The original basic rules of touch were established in the 1960s by members of the South Sydney Junior Rugby League Club in Sydney, Australia.

Distinctive features of touch include the ease of learning it, minimal equipment requirements, ability to play it without fear of major injury, and the regularity of males and females playing together, and as such it is often played either as alternative to or as a soft introduction to full-blown rugby football. While it is generally played with two teams of six on-field players, some social competitions allow a different number of players per team on the field. It is played by both sexes, and in age divisions from primary school children to over-60s. The mixed version of the sport (where both male and female players are on the field at the same time) is particularly popular with social players but is also played at an International representative level.

While it is often claimed that Touch started in Australia in 1963 as a social or "park" game and as a training technique for rugby league, at least as early as 1956, supervised "touch and pass" was already being played at several inner city schools in the North of England, where asphalt playgrounds made normal rugby league too dangerous. Although the rules were set out by the schools' sports teachers, it was not then viewed as a sport in its own right.

Touch was formalised into a sport proper by the "Founders of Touch", Bob Dyke and Ray Vawdon of the South Sydney Junior Rugby League Club. On 13 July 1968 an organisation known as the South Sydney Touch Football Club was formed and the sport of Touch Football was officially born. The first official Touch match was played in late 1968 and the first official competition, organised by Dyke & Vawdon, was held at Rowland Park Sydney in 1968.

From its formal inception in 1968, the game quickly became a fully regulated and codified sport in Australia. Originally played under lightly modified rugby league laws to remove hard physical contact, the sport has since evolved under its own specific rules now quite varied from its rugby league roots. The reduction of field size to half that of a rugby league field in particular aided the sports rapid growth across Australian rugby league stronghold areas as it allowed greater participating in the same geographic footprint.

The sport was first played in Brisbane, Australia in 1972 and by 1973 there were representative matches between sides representing the Australian states of Queensland and New South Wales. It had spread to New Zealand by 1975 and in 1978 the first national body, the Australian Touch Football Association (ATFA), now Touch Football Australia (TFA) was formed. The sports first national representative event, the Australian National Championships, was held on the Gold Coast, Queensland in 1980.

The ATFA dropped the word "Football" from its name in 1981, becoming the Australian Touch Association or ATA and thereby changing the sports name to simply Touch. In the same year, the ATA published the sports first formal set of playing rules.