Polyergus lucidus is a species of slave-making ant in the subfamily Formicinae endemic to the eastern United States.

It is an obligatory social parasite, unable to feed itself or look after its brood and reliant on ants of another species of the genus Formica to undertake these tasks.

P. lucidus is part of a group of six orange-red or dark-red species of ants, mostly from eastern North America, that have long, often dark-coloured appendages and few hairs on the dorsal surface of the gaster.

The worker is 5.7 to 7.1 mm (0.22 to 0.28 in) long and has a head longer than it is wide, crowned with about a dozen short setae (bristles).

Its range extends from New England and Wisconsin southwards to the Carolinas and Missouri, but it is absent from Kansas and Nebraska.