Central Europe is the region lying between the variously and vaguely defined areas of Eastern and Western Europe. In addition, Northern, Southern and Southeastern Europe may variously delimit or overlap into Central Europe. The term has come back into fashion since the end of the Cold War, which had divided Europe politically into East and West, with the Iron Curtain splitting "Central Europe" in half. ]] The understanding of the concept of Central Europe varies considerably from nation to nation, and also has from time to time.

The region is usually meant to include:

Rather than a physical entity, Central Europe is a concept of shared history which contrasts with that of the surrounding regions. Immediately to the east and southeast lie regions which had for longer periods been under the Ottoman Empire and Imperial Russia, with relics of a strong Hellenic cultural influence (eg. Cyrillic descending directly from Greek). These phenomena collectively established religions such as Eastern Orthodoxy, Uniate Catholicism, and Islam (ie. Sunni), with Central Europe generally defined as an overwhelmingly Roman Catholic area.

Up to World War I, it was distinguished from the region immediately to its west as an area of relative political conservatism opposed to the liberalism of France and Great Britain and the influences of the French Revolution. . In the nineteenth century, while France developed into a republic and Britain was a liberal parliamentary monarchy in which the monarch had very little real power, Austria-Hungary and Prussia (later Germany), in contrast, remained conservative monarchies in which the monarch and his court played a central governmental role, while still subject to some influence by religion.

In the English language, the concept of Central Europe largely fell out of usage during Cold War, overshadowed by notions of Eastern and Western Europe. However, the term is increasingly returning to everyday usage again, partly due to the recent expansion of the European Union, but mainly through the attempt by post-Communist governments in former Eastern European lands to create national images distancing themselves from their predecessors. An example is found in one of Europe's trading blocs - CEFTA - which is labelled Central European, and yet only comprises entities which were previously Communist territories. The founding members were Czechoslovakia (now two countries in the EU), Poland and Hungary, whilst its current members include Macedonia, Croatia, Serbia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Montenegro, Albania and Moldova).

It is sometimes joked that Central Europe is the part of the continent that is considered Eastern by Western Europeans and Western by Eastern Europeans.