Schweinfurt ('swine ford') is a town in the district of Lower Franconia in Bavaria, Germany. It is the administrative center of the surrounding district (Landkreis) of Schweinfurt and a major industrial, cultural and educational hub. The urban agglomeration has 100,200 (2018) and the town's catchment area, including the Main-Rhön region and parts of South Thuringia, 759,000 inhabitants.

Schweinfurt was first documented in 791 and is one of the oldest cities in Bavaria. Around 1000 the Margraves of Schweinfurt controlled large parts of northern Bavaria. From the 12th century until 1802 Schweinfurt was a Free imperial city within the Holy Roman Empire, around 1700 a humanistic center and in 1770 began the 250-year industrial history.

During the Second World War, the Americans suffered their biggest air defeat over Schweinfurt in the Second Raid on Schweinfurt (Black Thursday). On April 11, 1945, the US Army invaded the city. During the Cold War, the 1945 founded USAG Schweinfurt had the highest concentration of US combat units in the Federal Republic of Germany. In the northwest of Schweinfurt, an American town emerged, with a complete civil infrastructure including all kinds of shops for 12,000 Americans, soldiers and civilians. Until the withdrawal of the US Army at Schweinfurt in 2014, a total of about 100,000 US soldiers were stationed in the town.

Following German Reunification in 1990, Schweinfurt has become an important traffic hub in the center of Germany. It has the highest employment density (2015) and the third highest gross domestic product per inhabitant of Germany (2014).[citation needed] The world's largest bearing group SKF, the second largest Schaeffler, the second largest automotive supplier in the world ZF Friedrichshafen and the DAX group Fresenius Medical Care have their largest plants in Schweinfurt.

Some important inventions have their origin in Schweinfurt: the pedal bike by Philipp Moritz Fischer (1853) as well as the freewheel (1889) and the coaster brake (1903) by Ernst Sachs. In 1652, the oldest permanently existing natural-scientific academy in the world was founded in Schweinfurt, the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

Schweinfurt's main landmarks include:

• The St. Johannes Church, first written mention in the year 1237, during the Romanesque period. Nearly all European architectural styles are represented in this church, with the gothic choir of the beginning of the 15th century and the baptismal font, with its original painting of 1367.
• The Ebracher Hof is a renaissance building, acquired in 1431 from the Cistercian monastery Ebrach. It burned down to the external walls during the Second Margrave War in 1554 and was reconstructed in 1578. The Schweinfurt City Library moved into the Ebracher Hof in 2006 after extensive refurbishing measures.
• The Old Town Hall was built 1570-1572. It is one of the most famous[citation needed] Renaissance town halls of Germany.
• The Old Grammar School, seat of the local museum, was built 1582-1583.
• The Museum Georg Schafer (MGS) specializes in 19th-century paintings by artists from German-speaking countries. The museum has the world's most comprehensive collection of works by Carl Spitzweg. Further paintings by Caspar David Friedrich, Ferdinand Georg Waldmüller, Wilhelm von Kobell, Wilhelm Leibl, Adolph Menzel, Franz von Lenbach, Lovis Corinth, Max Liebermann, Max Slevogt and Max Beckmann.
• The Museum Otto Schafer (MOS) with the famous Schedel's Chronicle of the World, printed in Nuremberg in 1493 and further book arts, graphic arts and applied arts by Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach the Elder, Hans Holbein the Younger, Matthaus Merian the Elder, Caspar David Friedrich, Adolph Menzel, Max Slevogt and Lovis Corinth and graphic arts by Olaf Gulbransson.
• The Kunsthalle Schweinfurt (art gallery) also with temporary exhibitions, such as the Gunter Sachs Collection from the world-famous son of the Schweinfurt industrial dynasty Sachs (Fichtel & Sachs) in 2013/2014, with a who's who of international art history and pop art, with works by Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Salvador Dalí, Max Ernst and others.
• The Willy-Sachs-Stadion from Paul Bonatz is a multi-functional football stadium in a spacious park with large trees and many other sports fields. Since 1936, it has been home stadium to the 1. FC Schweinfurt 05, after his first venue, the Stadion am Hutrasen.

The marketplace has a large Friedrich Rückert monument in the centre, around which weekly markets and many city festivals are held. Stadtgalerie Schweinfurt, a 300 m long shopping mall, was built 2009.

Motherwell Park and Châteaudun Park connects the surrounding medieval buildings to the old town.