The Erfurt massacre was a school shooting that occurred on 26 April 2002 at the Gutenberg-Gymnasium, a secondary school in Erfurt, Germany. 19-year-old expelled student Robert Steinhäuser shot and killed 16 people, including 13 staff members, two students, and one policeman before committing suicide. One person was also wounded by a bullet fragment. According to students, he ignored them and aimed only for the teachers and administrators, although two students were unintentionally killed by shots fired through a locked door.

Erfurt (German pronunciation: [ˈɛʁfʊʁt] ) is the capital and largest city of the Central German state of Thuringia. It lies in the wide valley of the River Gera, in the southern part of the Thuringian Basin, north of the Thuringian Forest, and in the middle of a line of the six largest Thuringian cities, stretching from Eisenach in the west, via Gotha, Erfurt, Weimar and Jena, to Gera in the east, close to the geographic centre of Germany. Erfurt is 100 km (62 mi) south-west of Leipzig, 250 km (155 mi) north-east of Frankfurt, 300 km (186 mi) south-west of Berlin and 400 km (249 mi) north of Munich.