Snowboarding is a boardsport on snow similar to skiing, but inspired by surfing and skateboarding. Snowboarding is an increasingly common winter sport throughout the world.

A snowboarder's equipment consists of a snowboard, snowboarding boots, bindings to attach their boots to the board, as well as snowboarding-specific winter clothing. Snowboarding became a Winter Olympic Games sport in 1998. Other events that focus on snowboarding are the annual European and U.S. Open Snowboarding Championships and the Winter X-Games. These events are hosted by various winter resorts in Europe, United States, and Canada.

The snowboard evolved from early pioneering work by people such as Sherman Poppen (who, in 1965, invented the "Snurfer" in his North Muskegon, Michigan home), Chuck Barfoot, Dimitri Mitrovitch, Tom Sims, and Jake Burton Carpenter. Jake is the founder of Burton Snowboards, one of the largest, and most well-established snowboard companies in the world. In the early 1980s, snowboard companies such as Sims, Winterstick, and Avalanche began emerging across the country. Also in the early 1980s, films by Warren Miller and Greg Stump began to feature clips of snowboarders, boosting the popularity of the sport among the skiing community. It was not until the mid-1980s that snowboarding exploded into the mainstream, when the first snowboard magazine, Absolutely Radical, hit the racks; it was soon renamed International Snowboard Magazine. For more on the history of snowboarding, see this Snowboard History Timeline.