En topología, podemos asociar a cada punto p de un espacio topológico X un grupo que nos informa sobre la estructura 1-dimensional de la porción de espacio que rodea a este punto. Los elementos de este grupo, llamado grupo fundamental de X relativo al punto base p, son clases de equivalencia de lazos (curvas cerradas) con origen en el punto p. Existen generalizaciones a dimensión superior de este grupo, que reciben el nombre de grupos de homotopía. El grupo fundamental recibe también el nombre de primer grupo de homotopía. De ahí la forma común de notarlo como .

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In the mathematical field of algebraic topology, the fundamental group is a mathematical group associated to any given pointed topological space that provides a way to determine when two paths, starting and ending at a fixed base point, can be continuously deformed into each other. It records information about the basic shape, or holes, of the topological space. The fundamental group is the first and simplest homotopy group. The fundamental group is a topological invariant: homeomorphic topological spaces have the same fundamental group. Fundamental groups can be studied using the theory of covering spaces, since a fundamental group coincides with the group of deck transformations of the associated universal covering space. The abelianization of the fundamental group can be identified with the first homology group of the space. When the topological space is homeomorphic to a simplicial complex, its fundamental group can be described explicitly in terms of generators and relations. Henri Poincaré defined the fundamental group in 1895 in his paper "Analysis situs". The concept emerged in the theory of Riemann surfaces, in the work of Bernhard Riemann, Poincaré, and Felix Klein. It describes the monodromy properties of complex-valued functions, as well as providing a complete topological classification of closed surfaces.

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