Auckland Central is a New Zealand electoral division returning one member to the New Zealand House of Representatives. Its current representative is Nikki Kaye, a member of the National Party; she has represented the seat since 2008.

Auckland Central contains downtown Auckland, the suburbs of Ponsonby, Grey Lynn, Westmere, Arch Hill, Herne Bay, Freemans Bay, St Mary's Bay, Newton and Eden Terrace at the west side of the city. Because of the location of the main Auckland ferry terminal, Auckland Central also contains the islands of the Hauraki Gulf. At the 2008 election, Grafton became part of Epsom, and Point Chevalier moved into Mount Albert. To offset these changes, the suburb of Newton was drafted in from Mount Albert.

Auckland Central was created ahead of the 1887 election; it was carved from parts of the electorates of Auckland North and the Auckland West and focused around upper Queen Street, Grafton, and Newton. It lasted only until the 1890 elections, when a reduction in the number of electorates meant Auckland Central was re-incorporated into single larger Auckland electorate. At the 1905 elections, the Auckland seat was split into three seats, including a recreated Auckland Central.

The Auckland metropolitan area ( /ˈɔːklənd/, AWK-lənd), in the North Island of New Zealand, is the largest and most populous urban area in the country with 1,377,200 residents, 31 percent of the country's population. Auckland has the largest Polynesian population of any city in the world. In Māori Auckland's names are Tāmaki Makaurau, and the transliterated version of Auckland, Ākarana.

The 2011 Mercer Quality of Living Survey ranked Auckland 3rd equal place in the world on its list, while the Economist's World's Most Livable Cities index of 2011 ranked Auckland in 9th place. In 2010, Auckland was classified as a Beta World City in the World Cities Study Group’s inventory by Loughborough University.

Auckland lies between the Hauraki Gulf of the Pacific Ocean to the east, the low Hunua Ranges to the south-east, the Manukau Harbour to the south-west, and the Waitakere Ranges and smaller ranges to the west and north-west. The central part of the urban area occupies a narrow isthmus between the Manukau Harbour on the Tasman Sea and the Waitemata Harbour on the Pacific Ocean. It is one of the few cities in the world to have harbours on two separate major bodies of water.