Cochin International Airport is an international airport serving the city of Kochi, Kerala, in southwestern India. It is located at Nedumbassery, about 25 km (16 mi) northeast of the city center. The airport is the first of its kind to be developed under a public-private partnership (PPP) model in India. This project was funded by nearly 10,000 non-resident Indians from 32 countries. It is the busiest and largest airport in the state of Kerala and the fourth biggest airport in South India. As of 2024, the airport caters to more than 63% of the total air passenger traffic in Kerala. It is the third-busiest airport in India in terms of international traffic, and the eighth-busiest overall.

Kochi, also known by its former name Cochin, is a major port city along the Malabar Coast of India bordering the Laccadive Sea. It is part of the district of Ernakulam in the state of Kerala. The city is also commonly referred to as Ernakulam. As of 2011, the Kochi Municipal Corporation had a population of 677,381 over an area of 94.88 km2, and the larger Kochi urban agglomeration had over 2.1 million inhabitants within an area of 440 km2, making it the largest and the most populous metropolitan area in Kerala. Kochi city is also part of the Greater Cochin development region and is classified as a Tier-II city by the Government of India. The civic body that governs the city is the Kochi Municipal Corporation, which was constituted in the year 1967, and the statutory bodies that oversee its development are the Greater Cochin Development Authority (GCDA) and the Goshree Islands Development Authority (GIDA).