Umberto Bossi (born 19 September 1941) is an Italian politician and former leader of Lega Nord (Northern League), a party seeking autonomy or independence for Northern Italy or Padania. He is married to the Sicilian Manuela Marrone, and has four sons, of whom one was from his first wife.

Bossi was born in 1941 in Cassano Magnago, in the province of Varese, Lombardy. He graduated from scientific high school (liceo scientifico) and later began studying medicine at the University of Pavia, though he did not get a degree. In 1975, he was a member of the Italian Communist Party for a brief period. In February 1979, he met Bruno Salvadori, leader of the Valdostan Union.

After the death of Salvadori in a car accident during the summer of 1980, Bossi began focusing more on Lombardy. After two years, the autonomist Lombard League was born. In that period, Bossi met his second wife, Manuela Marrone.

The Lega Lombarda would later seek alliances with similar movements in Veneto and Piedmont, forming the Northern League, of which he was the federal secretary until 5 April 2012. He became the undisputed and unchallenged leader of the party, a position that he maintained until 2012, even after a serious stroke. He is currently the League's federal president, an honorary title devoid of real power, and is trying to regain the leadership of the movement he founded.

When the scandals of Tangentopoli were unveiled from 1992 on, Bossi rode the wave, presenting himself as the new man in politics, and set out to sweep away corruption and incompetence. Bossi himself received an eight-month suspended prison sentence, along with Northern League's treasurer at the time of the events, Alessandro Patelli, for receiving a 200-million-lire bribe in a trial that also convicted many of the politicians he routinely attacked, such as Bettino Craxi, Arnaldo Forlani and others. Bossi's sentence was upheld on appeal.

In 1998, Bossi received a one-year suspended prison sentence for incitement of violence after he uttered the following sentence at a Lega Nord meeting: "We must hunt down these rascals [neo-fascists], and if they take votes from us, then let's comb the area house by house, because we kicked the fascists out of here once before after the war."

While being Reform minister in 2003, Bossi ordered the Navy to fire live rounds on boats holding illegal immigrants, stating: "After the second or third warning, bang… we fire the cannon."

Bossi was critical of the European Union, and once described it as a "nest of communist bankers".