The Angolan Olympic Committee (Portuguese: Comité Olímpico Angolano) selected a total of 25 athletes, 8 men and 17 women, for the Games, competing in seven different sports.

Women's handball was the only team-based sport in which Angola had its representation at these Games, unable to send any of the nation's basketball teams to the Olympics for the first time since 1988.

Notable Angolan athletes featured three-time judoka Antónia Moreira, medley swimmer Pedro Pinotes, trap shooter João Paulo da Silva, who sought for his Olympic comeback in Rio after a 16-year absence, and four-time Olympian and handball team captain Luísa Kiala, who became the nation's flag bearer in the opening ceremony.

Remarkably going to her third Olympics, Antónia Moreira earned a continental quota spot from the African region as the highest-ranked Angolan judoka outside of direct qualifying position in the IJF World Ranking List of 30 May 2016.

[7] Angola has qualified one boat in the men's lightweight double sculls for the Games at the 2015 African Continental Qualification Regatta in Tunis, Tunisia.