List of University of Texas at Austin presidents

The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) is a public university in Austin, Texas, and the flagship university of the University of Texas System. The university has been led by 30 presidents since the office of the president was founded in 1895. The current president is Jay Hartzell, who has served in the position since 2020.

The position did not exist when UT Austin was established in 1883. Its founders followed the system established at the University of Virginia and gave control to the faculty, under a board of regents, through a chairman of their choosing. John William Mallet served as the first chairman of the faculty for most of the 1883–1884 academic year, with William Leroy Broun serving briefly at the end of the year. Leslie Waggener received the position in 1884 and served for ten years; Thomas Scott Miller took the role in 1894. By 1895, due to the need for a full-time executive, Waggener became the university's first president on an interim basis.

Many presidents early in the university's history had relatively short tenures. Tensions with the Board of Regents led to the removals of Homer P. Rainey in 1944 and Stephen H. Spurr in 1974; Rainey's firing over academic freedom and interference from regents particularly harmed the university's reputation for several years after and earned censure from the American Association of University Professors. In 1950, a separate chancellor position for the University of Texas System was established; that office assumed the responsibilities of the UT Austin president from 1963 to 1967.

Harry Yandell Benedict is the longest-serving president, as well as the first UT Austin alumnus to become president. Lorene Rogers became the university's first female president and has been called the first woman to lead a major state university. Peter T. Flawn served two separate terms as president, the only individual to do so. Several buildings on the UT Austin campus are named for past presidents, including Battle, Benedict, Calhoun, Mezes, Rainey, Painter, and Waggener Halls; the Larry R. Faulkner Nano Science and Technology Building; the Peter T. Flawn Academic Center; the Norman Hackerman Building; the William C. Powers Student Activity Center; and the Harry Ransom Center.