The Kaunas pogrom was a massacre of Jewish people living in Kaunas, Lithuania that took place in from June 25 to June 29, 1941 – the first days of the Operation Barbarossa and of Nazi occupation of Lithuania. The most infamous incident occurred in the Lietūkis garrage, where several Jews were publicly tortured and executed on June 26. After June, systematic executions took place at various forts of the Kaunas Fortress, especially the Seventh and Ninth Forts.

The Lithuanian Activist Front (LAF), a faction operating out of the Lithuanian embassy in Berlin and inside Soviet Lithuania, took control of the city and much of the Lithuanian countryside on the evening of June 23. Nazi SS Brigadeführer Franz Walter Stahlecker arrived in Kaunas on the morning of June 25 and held agitation speeches in the city to instigate the murder of Jews, initially in the former State Security Department building, but officials there refused to take any action. He later succeeded in convincing Algirdas Klimaitis to start the pogrom. Klimaitis controlled a paramilitary unit of roughly 600 men that was organized from Tilsit by SD and was not subordinated to the LAF.

Kaunas (/ˈkaʊnəs/; Lithuanian: [kɐˈunɐs] ( listen); see also other names) is the second-largest city in Lithuania and has historically been a leading centre of Lithuanian economic, academic, and cultural life. Kaunas was the biggest city and the centre of a powiat in Trakai Voivodeship of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania since 1413. During Russian Empire occupation it was the capital of the Kovno Governorate from 1843 to 1915. It became the only temporary capital city in Europe during the Interwar period. Now it is the capital of Kaunas County, the seat of the Kaunas city municipality and the Kaunas district municipality. It is also the seat of the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Kaunas. Kaunas is located at the confluence of the two largest Lithuanian rivers, the Nemunas and the Neris, and near the Kaunas Reservoir, the largest body of water entirely in Lithuania.

The city's name is of Lithuanian origins and most likely derives from a personal name.

Before Lithuania regained independence, the city was generally known in English as Kovno, the traditional Slavicized form of its name; the Polish name is Kowno; the Belarusian name is Koўнa, Kowna. An earlier Russian name was Ковно Kovno, although Каунас Kaunas has been used since 1940. The Yiddish name is Kovne (קאָװנע), while its names in German include Kaunas and Kauen. The city and its elderates also have names in other languages (see Names of Kaunas in other languages and names of Kaunas elderates in other languages).