The Guardian (until 1959 The Manchester Guardian) is a British newspaper owned by the Guardian Media Group. It is published Monday to Saturday in the Berliner format from its London and Manchester headquarters. The Guardian Weekly, which circulates worldwide, provides a compact digest of four newspapers. It contains articles from The Guardian and its Sunday paper, sister paper The Observer, as well as reports, features and book reviews from The Washington Post and articles translated from France's Le Monde. The Guardian Media Group also runs a multi-award winning website, guardian.co.uk.

Editorial articles in The Guardian are generally to the left of the political spectrum. This is reflected in the paper's readership: a MORI poll taken between April and June 2000 showed that 80% of Guardian readers were Labour Party voters; according to another MORI poll taken in 2004, 44% of Guardian readers were Labour voters and 37% Liberal Democrat voters.

The Guardian and its Sunday sibling, The Observer publish all their news online, with free access both to current news and an archive of three million stories. A third of the site's hits are for items over a month old. The website also offers a free printable A4 format PDF 24-hour newspaper, G24 - made up of the top stories - and, for a monthly subscription, the complete newspaper in PDF format. It is the most widely read UK newspaper site with more than 17.5 million users a month, compared with the second-placed telegraph.co.uk's 12.8 million users a month. This has been put down to its free, unrestricted access.