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PAL, short for Phase Alternating Line, is an analogue television encoding system used in broadcast television systems in large parts of the world. Other common analogue television systems are SECAM and NTSC. This page primarily discusses the colour encoding system. See the articles on broadcast television systems and analogue television for additional discussion of frame rates, image resolution and audio modulation. For discussion of the 625-line / 25 frame per second television standard, see 576i.

In the 1950s, when the Western European countries were planning to establish colour television, they were faced with the problem that the NTSC standard demonstrated several weaknesses, including colour tone shifting under poor transmission conditions, earning it a comically maligned backronym "Never Twice the Same Color". For these reasons the development of the SECAM and PAL standards began. The goal was to provide a colour TV standard for the European picture frequency of 50 fields per second (50 hertz), and finding a way to eliminate the problems with NTSC.

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