The Zara class was a class of three torpedo cruisers built for the Austro-Hungarian Navy in the late 1870s and early 1880s; they were the first large torpedo-armed warships built by Austria-Hungary. The class comprised three ships, Zara, Spalato, and Sebenico; the last vessel was built to a slightly different design, and is sometimes not counted as a member of the class. The design was prepared by Josef von Romako, the Chief Constructor of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, after a lengthy design process throughout the 1870s. The first two ships were armed with deck-mounted torpedo tubes, while Sebenico received an experimental tube in her bow, submerged below the waterline.

SMS Sebenico was a torpedo cruiser of the Austro-Hungarian Navy, the third member of the Zara class, though built to a slightly different design to her two half-sister ships in an unsuccessful attempt to improve her speed. She was laid down in July 1880, launched in February 1882, and commissioned in December that year. Too slow to be used in her intended roles as a fleet scout and a flotilla leader, she saw little active service. She took part in an international naval demonstration off Crete in 1897, where she sank a Greek ship trying to break the blockade. Sebenico served as a training ship for the rest of her career, including with the artillery school from 1903 to 1915, and with the torpedo school until the end of World War I in 1918. Ceded to Italy as a war prize in 1920, she was then broken up for scrap.