Champa was a collection of independent Cham polities that extended across the coast of what is present-day central and southern Vietnam from approximately the 2nd century CE until 1832. According to earliest historical references found in ancient sources, the first Cham polities were established around the 2nd to 3rd centuries CE, in the wake of Khu Liên's rebellion against the rule of China's Eastern Han dynasty, and lasted until when the final remaining principality of Champa was annexed by Emperor Minh Mạng of the Vietnamese Nguyễn dynasty as part of the expansionist Nam tiến policy. The kingdom was known variously as Nagaracampa, Champa (ꨌꩌꨛꨩ) in modern Cham, and Châmpa (ចាម្ប៉ា) in the Khmer inscriptions, Chiêm Thành in Vietnamese and Zhànchéng in Chinese records, and al-Ṣanf in Middle Eastern Muslim records.

The Chams, or Champa people, are an Austronesian ethnic group in Southeast Asia as well as an indigenous people of central Vietnam. They are the original inhabitants of coastal areas in Vietnam and Cambodia, along the South China Sea, since before the arrival of the Cambodians and Vietnamese, during the expansion of the Khmer Empire and the Vietnamese conquest of Champa.