Skylanders is a toys-to-life action-adventure video game franchise developed by American video game developer Toys for Bob and published by Activision.

Skylanders games are played using NFC-enabled collectible figurines of playable characters, alongside a specially themed NFC reader dubbed the "Portal of Power", which reads and writes data stored on a microchip within the base of the figure. This includes the corresponding character to use during gameplay, as well as ingame upgrades and statistics, allowing figures to retain their game data across different games in the series.

Each Skylander is associated with one of ten elements: Earth, Air, Fire, Water, Magic, Tech, Life, Undead, Light, and Dark. Skylanders of different elements are stronger in certain areas of the game, and can unlock areas of the game hidden behind "Elemental Gates".

The games take place in the Skylands, a realm of floating islands located at the center of the universe that is often threatened by evil forces who seek to rule it and gain access to all worlds. For generations, a band of heroes known as the Skylanders have worked with the Portal Masters to defend Skylands from evil and protect the Core of Light.

Preceeding the events of each game, the Skylanders are sent away from their homeworld to earth by an antagonistic force, becoming frozen in the process due to the lack of magic in the 'human world'. In most games, they are mistaken for toys in this state, causing them to be sold at toy stores.

The player(s) take on the role of a Portal Master, utilizing the Portal of Power to send the Skylanders back to their home so that they may battle against the Dark Portal Master Kaos, a recurring villain in the series, as well as his army and other recurring villains.