Karl August Leopold Böhm (28 August 1894 – 14 August 1981) was an Austrian conductor. He was best known for his performances of the music of Mozart, Wagner, and Richard Strauss.

Karl Böhm was born in Graz. The son of a lawyer, he studied law and earned a doctorate in this subject before entering the music conservatory in his home town of Graz, Austria. He later enrolled at the Vienna Conservatory, where he studied under Eusebius Mandyczewski, a friend of Johannes Brahms.

In 1957, Böhm made his debut with the Metropolitan Opera in New York, conducting Don Giovanni, and quickly became one of the favorite conductors of the Met's Rudolf Bing era, conducting 262 performances there, including the Met premieres of Wozzeck, Ariadne auf Naxos and Die Frau ohne Schatten, which was the first major success in the Met's new house at Lincoln Center.
Böhm led many other major new productions in New York, such as Fidelio for the 1970 Beethoven bicentennial, Tristan und Isolde (including the Met debut performance of Birgit Nilsson in 1959), Lohengrin, Otello, Der Rosenkavalier, Salome, and Elektra.
His repertoire there also included Le nozze di Figaro, Parsifal, Der fliegende Holländer, Die Walküre, and Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg.