Šabac (Serbian Cyrillic: Шабац, pronounced [ʃâbat͡s]) is a city and the administrative centre of the Mačva District in western Serbia.

The traditional centre of the fertile Mačva region, Šabac is located on the right banks of the river Sava.

The city is known by a variety of different names: Zaslon in medieval Serbian, Szabács in Hungarian, Böğürdelen in Turkish, and Schabatz in German.

After the Treaty of Belgrade (1739), Šabac reverted to Ottoman control and, straddling the boundary between the two empires, it gained importance as a market town.

A brief period of restored Ottoman control followed, but after the Second Serbian Uprising in 1815, Šabac was included into the now-autonomous Principality of Serbia under the Obrenović dynasty.

This first ruling family of modern Serbia left its mark on the town; knez Miloš Obrenović's brother, the enlightened Jevrem Obrenović, built a personal residence and helped modernise the town: the period from 1820 to 1850 saw the establishment of a hospital, a pharmacy, a Serbian grammar school, a gymnasium, a theatre, and a musical society.

The town prospered until the First World War, when it was occupied and devastated by the Austro-Hungarian army and had its population halved (from cca.

14,000 to 7,000) on the orders of Kasimir von Lütgendorf, despite the fact that the Royal Serbian Army evacuated the town without resistance.

In the German and Croatian Ustaše retributions 1,130 civilians were executed, 21,500 imprisoned and most of the populated places in Mačva were completely burned down.

The swamp at the city's outskirts, Benska Bara, was drained and turned into a residential neighborhood, and a new bridge was built over the Sava river.

However, international sanctions against Yugoslavia during the Bosnian War provoked the shutdown of the Zorka plant, which was the main enterprise in Šabac.

Since 2000, some of the more important companies are diary plant Mlekara Šabac, Elixir Group, Zorka Pharma, and Hesteel Serbia Iron & Steel - Tin mill.

[7] The following table gives a preview of total number of registered people employed in legal entities per their core activity (as of 2022):[8] There are several sports societies in Šabac: The length and status of roads in the city are: The Ruma-Šabac motorway, with a new 1,300-metre bridge on the Sava River, connects Srem and Mačva and was completed on time.