The Young and the Restless is an American television soap opera created by William J. Bell and Lee Phillip Bell for CBS. The show is set in a fictional version of Genoa City, Wisconsin. First broadcast on March 26, 1973, The Young and the Restless was originally broadcast as half-hour episodes, five times a week, before it was expanded to one-hour episodes on February 4, 1980. The show currently also airs on SOAPnet weeknights and is syndicated internationally.

The soap opera is one of the very few TV shows to successfully write out their original cast, and to replace them with new ones. The Young and the Restless originally focused on the personal and professional lives of two core families in Genoa City: the wealthy Brooks family and the poor Foster family. After a series of recasts and departures in the early 1980s, most of the original characters were written out and the show shifted to the rivalry between the Abbotts and the Newmans. Other families such as the Williams, the Winters, and the Fisher/Baldwins were also introduced through the years. However, one basic storyline has run throughout almost all of the show's history: the feud between Jill Foster Abbott and Katherine Chancellor, one of the longest rivalries on any American soap opera.

Since its debut, The Young and the Restless has won seven Daytime Emmy Awards for Outstanding Drama Series. It is also currently the highest-rated daytime drama on American television. As of 2008, it has appeared at the top of the weekly Nielsen Ratings in that category for more than 1000 weeks since 1988.