TurboGears is a Python web application framework consisting of several WSGI components such as WebOb, SQLAlchemy, Kajiki template language and Repoze.

Since version 2.3 the framework has also been providing a "minimal mode" which enables it to act as a microframework for usage in environments where the whole stack is not required nor wanted.

TurboGears was originally created in 2005 by Kevin Dangoor as the framework behind the as yet unreleased Zesty News product.

[3] When he released it as an open source framework in the end of September 2005, it received more than 30,000 screencast downloads in the first 3 months.

In June 2007 the community began experiments to put the TurboGears API on top of components and protocols used in Pylons and there was speculation that the two frameworks may finally be merging.

The development progresses at a moderate but steady pace and was also newly fueled by a successful participation of the project as a Google Summer of Code mentoring organization in 2008 and 2009.

In 2013, while maintaining backward compatibility, the project has moved away from the Pylons codebase to support Python 3, provide speed ups and an easier install process.