The York class was the second and final class of heavy cruisers built for the Royal Navy under the terms of the 1922 Washington Naval Treaty. They were essentially a reduced version of the preceding County class, scaled down to enable more cruisers to be built from the limited defence budgets of the late 1920s.

A heavy cruiser was a type of cruiser, a naval warship designed for long range and high speed, armed generally with naval guns of roughly 203 mm (8 inches) in calibre, whose design parameters were dictated by the Washington Naval Treaty of 1922 and the London Naval Treaty of 1930. Heavy cruisers were generally larger, more heavily-armed and more heavily-armoured than light cruisers while being smaller, faster, and more lightly-armed and armoured than battlecruisers and battleships. Heavy cruisers were assigned a variety of roles ranging from commerce raiding to serving as 'cruiser-killers,' i.e. hunting and destroying similarly-sized ships