RISC OS is a computer operating system originally designed by Acorn Computers Ltd in Cambridge, England. First released in 1987, it was designed to run on the ARM chipset, which Acorn had designed concurrently for use in its new line of Archimedes personal computers. RISC OS takes its name from the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture it supports.

Between 1987 and 1998, RISC OS was included in every ARM-based Acorn computer model, including the Acorn Archimedes line, Acorn's R line (with RISC iX as a dual-boot option), RiscPC, A7000, and prototype models such as the Acorn NewsPad and Phoebe computer. A version of the OS, named NCOS, was used in Oracle Corporation's Network Computer and compatible systems.

After the break-up of Acorn in 1998, development of the OS was forked and continued separately by several companies, including RISCOS Ltd, Pace Micro Technology, and Castle Technology. Since then, it has been bundled with several ARM-based desktop computers such as the Iyonix PC and A9home. As of March 2017, the OS remains forked and is independently developed by RISCOS Ltd and the RISC OS Open community.

Most recent stable versions run on the ARMv3/ARMv4 RiscPC, the ARMv5 Iyonix, ARMv7 Cortex-A8 processors (such as that used in the BeagleBoard and Touch Book) and Cortex-A9 processors (such as that used in the PandaBoard) and the low-cost educational Raspberry Pi computer. SD card images have been released for downloading free of charge to Raspberry Pi 1, 2, 3, & 4 users with a full graphical user interface (GUI) version and a command-line interface only version (RISC OS Pico, at 3.8 MB).