The Carpathian Mountains or Carpathians (Romanian: Carpaţi; Polish:Karpaty, Czech, and Slovak: Karpaty; Ukrainian: Карпати (Karpaty); German: Karpaten; Serbian: Karpati / Карпати; Hungarian: Kárpátok) are a range of mountains forming an arc of roughly 1,500 km across Central and Eastern Europe. They provide the habitat for the largest populations in Europe of brown bears, wolves and lynxes, as well as over one third of all European plant species.

The chain of mountain ranges stretches in an arc from the Czech Republic in the northwest to Ukraine and Romania in the east, to the Iron Gate on the Danube River between Romania and Serbia in the south. The highest range within the Carpathians are the Tatras, on the border of Poland and Slovakia, where the highest peaks exceed 2600 meters in elevation. The Carpathian chain is usually divided into three major parts: the Western Carpathians (Czech Republic, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary), the Eastern Carpathians (Southeastern Poland, Eastern Slovakia, Ukraine, Romania) and the Southern Carpathians (Romania).