Coordinates: 52°22′N 1°16′W / 52.37°N 1.26°W / 52.37; -1.26

Rugby is a market town in Warwickshire, England, located on the River Avon. The town has a population of 61,988 (2001 census) making it the second largest town in the county. The enclosing Borough of Rugby has a population of 91,600 (2005 estimate).

Rugby is 13 miles (21 km) east of Coventry, on the eastern edge of Warwickshire, near the borders with Northamptonshire and Leicestershire.

The town is credited with being the birthplace of rugby football.

Early Iron age settlement existed in the Rugby area, and a few miles outside what is now Rugby, existed a Roman settlement known as Tripontium. Rugby was originally a small Anglo-Saxon farming settlement, and was mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 as Rocheberie. Rugby obtained a charter to hold a market in 1255, and soon developed into a small country market town.

The name's likeliest origin is Anglo-Saxon Hrōca burh or similar = "Rook fort", where Rook may be the bird or may be a man's name. Another theory is that the name is originally derived from an old Celtic name Droche-brig meaning "wild hilltop". The change to -by is because of Viking influence: there are other place names ending in -by in the area ('By' meaning town in Norwegian, Swedish and Danish even today).

Warwickshire (ⁱ/ˈwɒrɨkʃər/ or /ˈwɒrɨkʃɪər/) is a landlocked non-metropolitan county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, although the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare and George Elliot. Commonly used abbreviations for the county are Warks or Warwicks.

The five districts of North Warwickshire, Nuneaton & Bedworth, Rugby, Warwick and Stratford-on-Avon together form the Warwickshire County Council area, and are within the 1974 boundaries. The shape of the administrative area of Warwickshire differs considerably from that of the historic county, which also includes the now autonomous unitary authorities of Coventry and Solihull, as well as a small area around central and northeast Birmingham.

For Eurostat purposes it is a NUTS 3 region (code UKG13) and is one of three counties that comprise the "Herefordshire, Worcestershire and Warwickshire" NUTS 2 region.

Warwickshire is bounded to the north-west by the West Midlands metropolitan county and Staffordshire, by Leicestershire to the north-east, Northamptonshire to the east, Worcestershire to the west, Oxfordshire to the south and Gloucestershire to the south-west. The northern tip of the county is only 3 miles (5 km) from the Derbyshire border. An average-sized English county covering an area of almost 2,000 km², it runs some 60 miles (97 km) north to south.