"A Scandal in Bohemia" is the first short story, and the third overall work, featuring Arthur Conan Doyle's fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

[2] "A Scandal in Bohemia" was first published on 25 June 1891 in the July issue of The Strand Magazine,[3] and was the first of the stories collected in The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes in 1892.

The King explains that, five years earlier, he engaged in a secret relationship with American opera singer Irene Adler.

The next morning, a disguised Holmes follows Adler and her soon to be husband Norton to a nearby church, where he is unexpectedly asked to be a witness to their wedding.

Holmes goes to the photograph's hiding spot, finding a photo of Irene Adler in an evening dress and a letter addressed to him.

But for the trained reasoner to admit such intrusions into his own delicate and finely adjusted temperament was to introduce a distracting factor which might throw a doubt upon all his mental results.

In derivative works, she is frequently used as a romantic interest for Holmes, a departure from Doyle's novels where he only admired her for her wit and cunning.

[4] In his Sherlock Holmes Handbook, Christopher Redmond notes "the Canon provides little basis for either sentimental or prurient speculation about a Holmes-Adler connection.

[10] The 1965 Broadway musical Baker Street was loosely based on the story, making Irene Adler into the heroine and adding Professor Moriarty as the villain.

However, they ended up falling in love, complicating the plan and forcing Moriarty to intervene when Holmes begins investigating on behalf of the King.

[14] The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother, a 1975 Gene Wilder film, parodies the basic storyline, with the female lead replaced with a music hall singer.

Kim Dickens plays Gloria Sullivan, the Irene Adler character, while Ryan O'Neal is Gregory Stark, the King of Bohemia equivalent.

[19] A radio adaptation starring John Gielgud as Holmes and Ralph Richardson as Watson aired in October 1954 on the BBC Light Programme.

It starred Vasily Livanov as Sherlock Holmes, Vitaly Solomin as Dr. Watson, Georgiy Martirosyan as the King of Bohemia and Larisa Solovyova as Irene Adler.

The episode featured Jeremy Brett as Holmes, David Burke as Watson, and Gayle Hunnicutt as Irene Adler, whose first name is pronounced "Irena" in this adaptation.

A series of four television movies produced in the early 2000s starred Matt Frewer as Sherlock Holmes and Kenneth Welsh as Dr. Watson.

The plot of the short story – Holmes and Watson attempting to recover incriminating photos from Adler – is covered briefly in the first half of the episode updated for the contemporary period (Adler's photos are stored digitally on her mobile phone) and adjusted (the royal they incriminate is British and female); the episode then moves on to a storyline based on other Sherlock Holmes stories and films while including Adler, Mycroft Holmes (Mark Gatiss) and Jim Moriarty.

"A Scandal in Bohemia" was adapted to the second episode "The Adventure of the Headmaster with Trouble" of NHK puppetry Sherlock Holmes.