A ring road, orbital motorway, beltway, circumferential highway, or loop highway is a road that encircles a town or city. The name "ring road" is used for the majority of metropolitan circumferential routes in the European Union, such as the Berliner Ring, the Brussels Ring, the Amsterdam Ring, the Boulevard Périphérique around Paris and the Leeds Inner and Outer ring roads. Australia also uses the term ring road, as in Melbourne's Western Ring Road.

In the European Union, some ring roads, particularly those of motorway standard which are longer in length, are often known as "orbital motorways". Examples include the London Orbital (188 km), Rome Orbital (68 km), Manchester Orbital (56 km) and the Madrid Orbital (33 km). In the United States, many ring roads are called beltways or loops, such as the Capital Beltway around Washington, D.C. Some ring roads, such as the Washington's Capital Beltway, use "Inner Loop" and "Outer Loop" terminology for directions of travel, since cardinal (compass) directions cannot be signed uniformly around the entire loop.