In George Lucas's Star Wars saga, Tatooine is the home planet of the Skywalker family and Ben Kenobi, the setting for much of the action in the saga's films (as well as several of the novels and other pieces of written fiction) and one of the most iconic Star Wars planets. The planet is seen in all the Star Wars movies except for episode five, The Empire Strikes Back.

Tatooine is a planet in a binary star system (the two suns are named Tatoo I & Tatoo II), inhabited by poor locals who are mostly moisture farmers. The planet has been the site of repeated and failed attempts at colonization. The planet was under the stranglehold of the Sith for thousands of years. The planet also was the area of many battles during the Great Sith Wars which occurred 4,000 years before the Phantom Menace. During the prequel-era, it was ruled for a long period by the Hutts, being beyond the reach of the Galactic Republic. After the fall of the Republic, the Galactic Empire established a token presence on Tatooine, but the crime lord Jabba the Hutt still retained control of the planet.

Tatooine has several sizable settlements, the largest of which is the spaceport Mos Eisley, widely known for its rough-and-tumble nature and pervasive criminal underworld. Other settlements include Bestine (the nominal capital of the planet, where the Empire's government is located), Anchorhead, Tosche Station, Mos Entha, Wayfar (near Jabba's Palace), and Mos Espa, home of a sector-famous podracing track.

Because Tatooine is not a member of the Republic, Republic Credits were rarely used by merchants on the planet, who preferred to use the Huttese currency system, which consists of (in descending order of value) Peggats, Truguts and Wupiupi.

Notable geological features include the Dune Sea, an enormous desert, and the Jundland Wastes, a rocky region. Despite the planet's extreme aridity, some forms of life do thrive on Tatooine, including the rodent-like Womp rat, elephant-like bantha, and the enormous, fearsome Krayt Dragon.

Tatooine is also home to two apparently native sentient bipedal species: Jawas, pygmy-like scavengers of technology, and Tusken Raiders, also known as Sand People, who are mysterious, reclusive, and extremely hostile to outsiders. Both races wear fully concealing robes keeping their true forms hidden from outsiders (it's stated in the Expanded Universe that Jawas are rodent-like and vaguely hinted that the Jawas and Sand People share a common ancestor). It is implied in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic that their common ancestor are Humans, and that Tatooine is the original human homeworld.

Tatooine was once a member world of the pre-Republic Infinite Empire. Tatooine once had large oceans and a world-spanning jungle. This biosphere was destroyed by an orbital bombardment by the Rakata that "glassed" the planet (that is, fused the silica in the soil into glass, which then broke up over time into sand) and boiled the oceans away. Tatooine is also one of the planets visited in the award-winning computer role-playing game Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.