Military recruitment is recruitment for military positions, that is, the act of requesting people, usually male adults, to join a military voluntarily. Involuntary military recruitment is known as conscription. Even before the era of all-volunteer militaries, recruitment of volunteers was an important component of filling military positions, and in countries that have abolished conscription, it is the sole means. To facilitate this process, armed forces have established recruiting commands.

Military recruitment can be considered part of military science if analysed as part of military history. Acquiring large amounts of forces in a relatively short period of time, especially voluntarily, as opposed to stable development, is a frequent phenomenon in history. One particular example is the regeneration of the military strength of the Communist Party of China from a depleted force of 8,000 following the Long March in 1934 into 2.8 million near the end of the Chinese Civil War 14 years later.