The men's horizontal bar competition was one of eight events for male competitors in artistic gymnastics at the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta.

Wecker, who had won silver four years earlier, was the ninth man to win multiple medals in the event.

1996 was the only time that world championships had been held all four years since the last Olympics; the title winners all competed in Atlanta: Sergei Kharkov of Russia (1993), Vitaly Scherbo of Belarus (1994), Wecker (1995), and Jesús Carballo of Spain.

[1] Armenia, Barbados, Belarus, Croatia, the Czech Republic, Georgia, Iceland, Ireland, Kazakhstan, Russia, and Ukraine each made their debut in the men's horizontal bar.

The United States made its 17th appearance, most of any nation; the Americans had missed only the inaugural 1896 event and the boycotted 1980 Games.