A strategy of tension (Italian: strategia della tensione) is a policy wherein violent struggle is encouraged rather than suppressed. The purpose is to create a general feeling of insecurity in the population and make people seek security in a strong government. This is supposed to pave the way for a more authoritarian, or even neofascist, government.

The strategy of tension is most closely identified with the Years of Lead in Italy from 1968 to 1982, wherein both far-left Marxist and far-right neo-fascist extra-parliamentary groups, and state intelligence agencies performed bombings, kidnappings, arsons, and murders. Some historians and activists have accused NATO of allowing and sanctioning such terrorism, through projects such as Operation Gladio, although this is disputed by the intelligence agencies involved and other historians. Other cases where writers have alleged a strategy of tension include the deep state in Turkey from the 1970s–1990s ("Ergenekon"), the war veterans and ZANU–PF in Zimbabwe which coordinated the farm invasions of 2000, the DRS security agency in Algeria from 1991 to 1999, and the State Security Service (Belgium) during the Belgian terrorist crisis of 1982–1986.

According to the sociologist Franco Ferraresi, the term "strategy of tension" was first used in an article on the Piazza Fontana bombing in The Observer newspaper, published on 14 December 1969. Neal Ascherson, one of those responsible for that article, later clarified that the expression had been suggested to him by the journalists Antonio Gambino and Claudio Risé, both of L'Espresso, who had been in conversation with him in the days immediately following the explosion of the Piazza Fontana bomb.