The April Uprising (bulg. Априлско въстание), was an insurrection organised by the Bulgarians in the Ottoman Empire from April to May, 1876, the indirect result of which was the liberation of Bulgaria in 1878.

The uprising broke out as a result of the severe internal and external problems which the Ottoman Empire experienced in the middle of the 1870s. In 1875, taxes levied on non-Muslims were raised for fear of a state bankrupt, which, in its turn, caused tension between Muslims and Christians and triggered an insurrection in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The failure of the Ottomans to handle the uprising successfully showed the weakness of the Ottoman state while the brutalities which ensued dicredited additionally the empire to the outside world.

In November 1875, activists of the Bulgarian Revolutionary Central Committee met in the Romanian town of Giurgiu and decided that the political situation was suitable for a general uprising. The uprising was scheduled for April or May 1876. The territory of the country was divided into five revolutionary districts with centres in Vratsa, Veliko Tarnovo, Sliven, Plovdiv and Sofia.

In the progress of the preparation of the uprising, the organisers gave up the idea of a fifth revolutionary district in Sofia due to the deplorable situation of the local revolutionary committees and moved the centre of the fourth revolutionary district from Plovdiv to Panagyurishte. On April 14th, 1876, a general meeting of the committees from the fourth revolutionary district was held in the Oborishte locality near Panagyurishte to discuss the proclamation of the insurrection. One of the delegates, however, disclosed the plot to the Ottoman authorities. On April 20th, 1876, Ottoman police made an attempt to arrest the leader of the local revolutionary committee in Koprivchtitsa, Todor Kableshkov.

In conformity with the decisions taken at Oborishte, the local committee attacked the headquarters of the Ottoman police in the town and proclaimed the insurrection two weeks in advance. Within several days, the rebellion spread to the whole Sredna Gora and to a number of towns and villages in the northwestern Rhodopes. The insurrection broke out in the other revolutionary districts, as well, though on a much smaller scale. The areas of Gabrovo, Tryavna, and Pavlikeni also revolted in force, as well as several villages north and south of Sliven and near Berovo (in present-day Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia).

The reaction of the Ottoman authorities was quick and ruthless. Detachments of regular and irregular Ottoman troops (Bashi-bazouks) were mobilised and attacked the first insurgent towns as early as April 25th. By the middle of May, the insurrection was completely suppressed. Some 30,000 people were massacred, 80 villages and towns were burned and destroyed and 200 others were plundered. The atrocities which accompanied the suppression of the insurrection reached its peak in the northern Rhodopes. Nearly the whole population of the town of Batak (3,000 people) was slaughtered or burned alive by Ottoman irregulars who left piles of dead bodies around the town square and church.

Although the insurrection was a failure in itself, it caused an enormous public outcry in Europe. The pictures of burned or slaughtered human bodies and the articles on the Ottoman atrocities went round all European newspapers and evoked condemn by a number of leading European political and cultural figures, including William Gladstone, Charles Darwin, Oscar Wilde, Victor Hugo and Giuseppe Garibaldi. The tumult caused by the uprising led to the Conference of Constantinople in 1876 and the Russo-Turkish War, 1877-78.