Brancaster is a village and civil parish on the north coast of the English county of Norfolk. The civil parish of Brancaster comprises Brancaster itself, together with Brancaster Staithe and Burnham Deepdale. The three villages form a more or less continuous settlement along the A149 at the edge of the Brancaster Manor marshland and the Scolt Head Island National Nature Reserve. The villages are located about 3 miles (4.8 km) west of Burnham Market, 22 miles (35 km) north of the town of King's Lynn and 31 miles (50 km) north-west of the city of Norwich. The civil parish has an area of 8.27 square miles (21.4 km2) and in the 2011 census had a population of 797 in 406 households. For the purposes of local government, the parish falls within the district of King's Lynn and West Norfolk. In 2016, Janet Lake, the clerk to Brancaster Parish Council, reached 50 years of service in the post.

Scolt Head Island is an offshore barrier island between Brancaster and Wells-next-the-Sea in north Norfolk. It is in the parish of Burnham Norton and is accessed by a seasonal ferry from the village of Overy Staithe. The shingle and sand island appears to have originated from a former spit extending from the coast, and longshore drift means that it is slowly moving to the west and inshore.