The men's coxed four (M4+) competition at the 1976 Summer Olympics took place at the rowing basin on Notre Dame Island in Montreal, Quebec, Canada.

East Germany took its third consecutive silver medal, with entirely different crews each time.

The defending champion West Germany received bronze this time.

[1] While West Germany had won the previous Olympic event in 1972, the Soviet Union had since won most of the relevant competitions: the 1973 European Rowing Championships (the event was discontinued after 1973) and the 1975 World Rowing Championships.

In the 1974 World Rowing Championships, the Soviet Union won silver.

The coxed four event featured five-person boats, with four rowers and a coxswain.

The competition continued to use the six-boat heat standardised in 1960 as well as the "B" final for ranking 7th through 12th place introduced in 1964.

[10] The team from the Soviet Union replaced Aleksandr Sema with Mikhail Kuznetsov.

The Czechoslovakian, Bulgarian, and New Zealand teams changed seats for all four rowers.