Halo is a science fiction video game franchise created by Bungie and owned and published by Microsoft Game Studios. The main trilogy of games center on the experiences of the Master Chief, a cybernetically-enhanced human super-soldier, and his artificial intelligence (AI) companion, Cortana. The Master Chief aids future humanity in battling the Covenant, a theocratic alliance of alien races.

In this science fiction setting, the term "Halo" refers to Halo megastructures: large, habitable ringed structures, similar to Larry Niven's ringworlds. The trilogy of video games have been praised as being among the best first-person shooters on a video game console, and are considered the Microsoft Xbox's "killer app". This has led to the term "Halo killer" being used to describe console games that aspire, or are considered, to be better than Halo.

Fuelled by the success of Halo: Combat Evolved, and immense marketing campaigns from publisher Microsoft, both sequels went on to break various sales records. Halo 3 sold more than US$170 million worth of copies in the first twenty-four hours of release, breaking the record set by Halo 2 three years prior. The games have sold over 27 million copies worldwide.

Strong sales of the games has led to the franchise's expansion to other mediums; there are five bestselling novels, two graphic novels, and other licensed products. Beyond the original trilogy, other "Halo" games have branched off into other video game genres, including Halo Wars, a real-time strategy game produced as developer Ensemble Studios' last project. Video games in development include Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach.

The series' award-winning music was composed by Bungie's own in-house musician Martin O'Donnell, and soundtracks have been released for the entire trilogy. The cultural impact of the Halo series has been compared by writer Brian Bendis to that of Star Wars. The collective group of fans of the series is referred to as the "Halo Nation".

Halo is set several centuries in the future. After the development of the "Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine", the United Nations Space Command (UNSC) begins a program of interstellar travel and planetary colonization. Over 800 planets are colonized in 200 years, categorized as "Inner Colonies" and "Outer Colonies".

The Inner Colonies, being closer to Earth, are more developed and politically stable. The Outer Colonies were reachable after the breakthrough of the Shaw-Fujikawa Translight Engine. Due to the older planets' need for the raw materials and supplies the Outer Colonies provide, tensions and outright civil war foments between the colonies and the UNSC.

The UNSC creates the SPARTAN-II Project in order to covertly suppress these rebellions. Twenty-seven years before the events of the main game trilogy, UNSC communication with the colony Harvest is lost, and the ship sent to investigate is destroyed by the Covenant, a theocratic collective of aliens bent on exterminating humanity. The Covenant leadership has declared humanity to be an affront to their gods, the Forerunner.

By 2535, almost all of the Outer Colonies have been destroyed by the Covenant; in response, the UNSC vigorously enforces the "Cole Protocol", destroying material and ships that might lead the Covenant to Earth. The Covenant possesses a significant technological advantage, and proves nearly impossible for the UNSC to defeat in space engagements. These events are only alluded to in the video games, but their full descriptions are outlined in the novels Halo: The Fall of Reach and Contact Harvest, as well as in the real-time strategy game Halo Wars.

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