Vegeta (Japanese: ベジータ, Hepburn: Bejīta) (/vəˈdʒiːtə/ və-JEE-tə), fully referred to as Prince Vegeta IV (ベジータ王子四世, Bejīta-ōji Yon-sei), is a fictional character in the Japanese franchise Dragon Ball created by Akira Toriyama. Vegeta made his appearance in chapter #204 "Sayonara, Son Goku", published in Weekly Shōnen Jump magazine on January 7, 1989, seeking the wish-granting Dragon Balls to achieve immortality.

As the first major antagonist of Dragon Ball Z, Vegeta is the prince of an elite extraterrestrial warrior race known as the Saiyans. As a person, he is naturally blunt, regal, hard-working, and is full of his Saiyan pride; he often refers to his heritage and royal status throughout the series, but can also have negative traits such as being extremely haughty, along with a destructive temper. He believed that he should be regarded as the strongest fighter in the universe, and becomes obsessed with surpassing Son Goku after losing his battle with the Z fighters. However, after Frieza's death, Vegeta unites with the heroes to thwart greater threats to the universe, most notably Cell, Majin Buu, Gomah, Beerus, Zamasu, Jiren, Broly, Moro and Granolah. Throughout the series, Vegeta's role changes from villain to later as one of the heroes, while remaining a key rival to Goku.

Vegeta has been hailed as one of the most iconic characters not only in the Dragon Ball franchise, but also in manga and anime history as a whole. He is often cited as one of the most popular examples of rival characters in the industry, due to his character arc and narrative throughout Dragon Ball Z and Dragon Ball Super.

When creating Vegeta, Toriyama originally intended for him to be a short-lived antagonist and second-tier character, with little influence on Dragon Ball's story. Toriyama intended for Goku to simply kill him at the climax of their first battle, and portrayed him as simply and one-dimensional as he should have been, considering this.

Despite this, the character became more popular than he had expected, and Toriyama became afraid of the backlash of killing him unceremoniously. Thus, Toriyama decided to keep Vegeta in the story for longer. Frieza, who was designed as the antagonist of a later story arc whom Vegeta would come into conflict much later in the story, was used with the secondary aim to create a reasonable "Death" for Vegeta. But he would be revived due to his popularity.

He explained his surprise at the character's popularity in an interview during the release of Dragon Ball Z: Battle of Gods, "I had thought about bringing an end to [his story] as just a villain, but as I was writing, I felt that his villainous [...] warped straightforwardness was unexpectedly interesting. I couldn't imagine that a guy with this kind of hairstyle would become popular, and yet he'd get more votes than Goku in favorite-character polls."

Toriyama initially harbored a dislike for Vegeta since he was created as a despicable character, but grew to like him as he considered the character's personality to be straightforward, therefore easier to write. He also found the character "Extremely helpful to have around". He stated at one point when he received a lot of fan mail telling him not to kill Vegeta, he purposely did just that. After the release of Battle of Gods, Toriyama expressed interest in having Vegeta be the lead in the event of another animated feature, though he insisted this was only his intent and no decision had been made.

Following the trend that names of members of the Saiyan race are puns on vegetables, Vegeta's name is a pun on the word vegetable itself.