The University of Florida (Florida or UF) is a public land-grant research university in Gainesville, Florida, United States. It is a senior member of the State University System of Florida. The university traces its origins to 1853 and has operated continuously on its Gainesville campus since September 1906.

After the Florida state legislature's creation of performance standards in 2013, the Florida Board of Governors designated the University of Florida as a "preeminent university". The University of Florida is one of three members of the Association of American Universities in Florida and is classified among "R1: Doctoral Universities – Very high research spending and doctorate production".

The university is accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). It is the third largest U.S. public university by student population and is the fifth largest single-campus university in the United States with 54,814 students enrolled in fall 2023. The University of Florida is home to 16 academic colleges and more than 150 research centers and institutes. It offers multiple graduate professional programs—including business administration, engineering, law, dentistry, medicine, pharmacy and veterinary medicine—on one contiguous campus and administers 123 master's degree programs and 76 doctoral degree programs in 87 schools and departments. The university's seal is also the seal of the state of Florida, which is on the state flag, though in blue rather than multiple colors.

The University of Florida's intercollegiate sports teams, the Florida Gators, compete in National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) Division I and the Southeastern Conference (SEC). As of 2021,^[update] University of Florida students and alumni have won 143 Olympic medals, including 69 gold medals.

The modern University of Florida traces its origins to 1853, when the East Florida Seminary, the oldest of its four predecessor institutions, was founded in 1853 as the East Florida Seminary in Ocala, Florida. The seminary was Florida's first state-supported institution of higher learning and operated until 1861 with the outbreak of the American Civil War. In 1866, the East Florida Seminary reopened in Gainesville on the grounds of the Gainesville Academy, a small private college that had closed during the war.

The second precursor to the University of Florida was Florida Agricultural College (FAC), the state's first land-grant college under the Morrill Act, established in Lake City in 1884. The Florida Legislature, looking to expand FAC's curriculum beyond agricultural and engineering offerings, changed the school's name to the "University of Florida" for the 1903–1904 academic year. This name was in use for two years.

In 1905, the Florida Legislature passed the Buckman Act, which reorganized the state's publicly supported institutions of higher education. Under the act, Florida's six state-supported institutions were merged to form the State University System of Florida under the newly established Florida Board of Control. Four institutions were combined to create a new "University of the State of Florida" for white men: the University of Florida at Lake City (formerly Florida Agricultural College), the East Florida Seminary in Gainesville, the St. Petersburg Normal and Industrial School in St. Petersburg, and the South Florida Military College in Bartow.

The Buckman Act also created two other institutions segregated by race and gender: Florida Female College (later the Florida State College for Women and eventually Florida State University) for white women and the State Normal School for Colored Students (later Florida A&M) for African-American men and women, both in Tallahassee.