Vorkuta (Nenets: Varkuta, Komi: Vörkuta) is a city in the Komi Republic, Russia. It is the easternmost city in Europe and the fourth most populous city above the Arctic Circle. It stands on the Vorkuta River, whose name translates from Nenets as a place “teeming with bears”.

The “fire stone” of the Pechora region was known since the 19th century, but systematic exploration began in the 1920s. In June 1930 the expedition led by G. A. Chernov discovered five workable seams of high-quality coal 70 km upstream from the river's mouth. Construction relied on prisoners of the Ukhtpechlag camp — 9,000 people in 1932, already 55,000 by 1938.

On 28 December 1941 the first coal train left Vorkuta along the North-Pechora railway. On 26 November 1943 the settlement was granted city status. Its history is forever bound to the Vorkutlag (1932–1962), one of the largest GULAG camps — up to 73,000 prisoners at its 1951 peak — and to the Vorkuta uprising of 1953, one of the largest in the USSR.

In the post-war decades Vorkuta became one of the country's largest coal-mining centres: 13 mines, a cold-storage plant, a poultry farm, its own air service. The population peaked at 117,000 in 1991. After the collapse of the USSR, mines closed and the city became Russia's leader in population decline — today just over 55,000 people live here.

The core enterprise is Vorkutaugol JSC (the mining division of Severstal PJSC), whose main product is coking coal concentrate. In September 2024 an agreement was signed to build the Vorkuta Gas-Chemical Complex: planned investment of 200 billion rubles and around 2,000 new jobs.