Skat is an early 19th century trick-taking card game devised in Germany. Along with Doppelkopf it is the most popular card game in Germany and Silesia.^{[citation needed]}

Skat features prominently in Günter Grass's novel The Tin Drum and leads a trail connecting the plot. It is also played by many soldiers in Remarque's novel All Quiet on the Western Front, and was a favorite game of Richard Strauss, who included a hand in his opera Intermezzo.

Skat was developed by the members of the Brommesche Tarok-Gesellschaft between 1810 and 1817 in Altenburg, in what is now the Federated State of Thuringia, Germany, based on the three-player game of Tarock, also known as Tarot, and the four-player game of Schafkopf (the American equivalent being Sheepshead). In the earliest known form of the game, the player in prior position was dealt twelve cards to the other players' ten each, made two discards, constituting the skat, and then announced a contract. But the main innovation of this new game was then that of the Bidding process.