Kherson Oblast (Ukrainian: Херсонська область, translit. Khersons’ka oblast’; also referred to as Khersonshchyna – Ukrainian: Херсонщина) is an oblast (province) in southern Ukraine, just north of Crimea. Its administrative center is Kherson. The area of the region is 29000 km², its population (as of 1 May 2004) is 1.12 million.

Important cities in the oblast include:

The Kherson Oblast is bordered by the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast on the north, the Black Sea and the Crimea on the south, the Mykolayiv Oblast on the west, and the Azov Sea and the Zaporizhzhia Oblast on the east.

The Dnieper River runs through the oblast which includes the Kakhovka Reservoir.

The following data incorporates the number of each type of administrative divisions of the Kherson Oblast:

The local administration of the oblast' is controlled by the Kherson Oblast Rada. The governor of the oblast' is the Kherson Oblast Rada speaker, appointed by the President of Ukraine.

The population of the oblast is 1,367,685 (2004), which is 2.4% of the total population of Ukraine. It is also ranked 21st by its population. The population density is 43 p/km²

Kherson (Ukrainian and Russian: Херсо́н) is a city in southern Ukraine. It is the administrative center of the Kherson Oblast (province), and is designated as its own separate raion (district) within the oblast. Kherson is an important port on the Black Sea and Dnieper River, and the home of a major ship-building industry. The current estimated population is 329,000 (as of 2007).

Until 1774, the region belonged to the Crimean Khanate. Kherson was founded in 1778 by Grigori Aleksandrovich Potemkin, on the orders of Catherine the Great. The city was built under the supervision of General Ivan Gannibal on the site of a small fortress called Aleksanderschanz. The name Kherson is a contraction of Chersonesos, an ancient Greek colony founded approximately 2500 years ago in the southwestern part of Crimea. One of the first buildings in the Kherson Fort was the Church of St. Catherine where Potemkin was eventually buried. The last tarpan was caught near Kherson in 1866.^{[citation needed]}

As of Ukrainian National Census (2001), the ethnic groups living within Kherson are: