Betawi people, or Batavians, are an Austronesian ethnic group native to the city of Jakarta and its immediate outskirts, as such often described as the native inhabitants of the city. They are the descendants of the people who inhabited Batavia from the 17th century onwards.

Jakarta, officially the Special Capital Region of Jakarta and formerly known as Batavia until 1949, is the nation's capital city and the centre of the largest metropolis of Indonesia. Lying on the northwest coast of Java, the world's most populous island, Jakarta is the largest metropole in Southeast Asia, and serves as the diplomatic capital of ASEAN. Jakarta is bordered by two provinces: West Java to the south and east; and Banten to the west. The Special Capital Region has a status equivalent to that of a province. Its coastline faces the Java Sea to the north, and it shares a maritime border with Lampung to the west. Jakarta's metropolitan area is ASEAN's second largest economy after Singapore.