The Quintette du Hot Club de France was a Paris jazz group built around the guitarist Django Reinhardt and the violinist Stéphane Grappelli. It was formed in 1934 and stayed active in one form or another until 1948. Its instrumentation was its signature: a violin, a lead guitar, two rhythm guitars and a double bass, with no drums, horns or piano. Between 1934 and 1948 it recorded more than 130 titles for Ultraphone, Swing, Decca, HMV and other labels, among them "Djangology", "Minor Swing" and, in its wartime form, "Nuages". AllMusic's Thom Jurek counts it among the most original bands in recorded jazz.

The group came out of backstage jam sessions at the Hôtel Claridge on the Champs-Élysées in the summer of 1934, where Reinhardt and Grappelli both played in the orchestra of the double bassist Louis Vola. The guitarist Roger Chaput, also in Vola's band, joined the jams, and Reinhardt brought in his brother Joseph, known as Nin-Nin, as a second rhythm guitarist so that he could solo over a fuller rhythm section. Pierre Nourry and Charles Delaunay, who ran the Hot Club de France, the Paris society of jazz enthusiasts chaired by the critic Hugues Panassié, pressed the five to become a permanent group. In December 1934 they recorded for Ultraphone, and the first record, "Dinah" coupled with "Lady Be Good" (AP 1422), was issued under the name of the Quintette du Hot Club de France with Reinhardt's first name misspelled "Djungo" on the label.

From 1935 to 1939 the quintet toured Europe and was especially popular in Britain. In 1937 the singer Adelaide Hall opened the Montmartre club La Grosse Pomme and hired it as one of the house bands. That year Delaunay launched the Swing label, one of the first record labels devoted entirely to jazz, and on November 25, 1937 the group recorded "Minor Swing" in Paris with Reinhardt, Grappelli, Joseph Reinhardt, Eugène Vées and Vola; it came out as Swing SW. 23 and is credited to Reinhardt and Grappelli. Records for HMV and Decca ran alongside, including "Swing Guitars" (HMV B.8532, coupled with a vocal by Freddy Taylor on "Georgia on My Mind") and "Stomping at Decca" (Decca 23066 in the United States). The rhythm and bass chairs turned over: Discogs credits Pierre Ferret, Marcel Bianchi, Eugène Vées and Joseph Reinhardt on guitar, and Vola and Tony Rovira on bass, across the 1935 to 1939 sessions, and Reinhardt and Grappelli were the only constant members. Outside the quintet both also worked with visiting Americans, among them Coleman Hawkins and Benny Carter.

The original group ended in September 1939, when war was declared while the quintet was touring Britain. Reinhardt went back to France and Grappelli stayed in London. Reinhardt kept the name for a different band, built around the clarinettist Hubert Rostaing and a conventional rhythm section that included drums, often six players strong and sometimes billed as a new quintet. Wartime shortages limited its output, yet it made about seventy titles up to 1948, among them the first recording of "Nuages", issued in 1940 on Swing SW. 88 and coupled with "Les Yeux noirs". Discogs credits that record to Rostaing and Alix Combelle on clarinets, Tony Rovira on bass, Pierre Fouad on drums and Joseph Reinhardt on guitar, besides Reinhardt.

Grappelli spent the war years in Britain. In January and February 1946 Reinhardt joined him in London to record for EMI and Decca with an English rhythm section; the Decca single "Love's Melody" coupled with "Nuages" (F.8604) has Allan Hodgkiss and Jack Llewelyn on guitar and Coleridge Goode on bass. Back in France the two reunited intermittently under the Quintette name in the all-string format through 1947 and 1948, with a shifting cast of rhythm guitarists and bassists, while Reinhardt also led his clarinet-and-drums "new quintet". Swing issued "Ol' Man River" coupled with "Si tu savais" (SW. 270) in 1948. The group is generally dated to 1948 as its end. In early 1949 the two made a last run of recordings in Rome with an Italian rhythm section, and after 1950 Reinhardt stopped using the name and billed his bands as Django Reinhardt et son quintette. He passed away on May 16, 1953.

The records have stayed in circulation through reissues. Decca put the 1935 to 1946 sides out in a five-LP French set, Intégrale 1935-1946 (115.120/24), in 1972, and Mosaic gathered the Swing and HMV sessions of 1936 to 1948 in a six-CD box (MD6-190) in 2000. Through the 1950s and 1960s guitarists including Baro Ferret, Matelo Ferret, Étienne "Patotte" Bousquet and Tchan Tchou Vidal kept the style alive, in 1973 the British guitarist Diz Disley helped bring Grappelli back to an all-string group inspired by the quintet, and later players such as Fapy Lafertin, Raphaël Faÿs and Biréli Lagrène carried it round the world. A New Quintette du Hot Club de France that included Reinhardt's son Babik Reinhardt recorded an album in 1998, and in June 2024 the Hot Club de France gave the name to a new quintet led by the guitarist Duved Dunayevsky and the violinist Daniel Garlitsky, which played the Salle Cortot in Paris that December.

The quintet's sound followed from its instrumentation. Grappelli's violin and Reinhardt's lead guitar carried the melodies and solos over two rhythm guitars and a double bass, so the swing came from strummed guitar chords and a walking bass line rather than from drums. The repertoire mixed American standards, such as "Limehouse Blues", "After You've Gone", "Tiger Rag" and "Sweet Georgia Brown", with the two leaders' own pieces, notably "Djangology", "Minor Swing" and the wartime "Nuages". Wikipedia describes the group as combining jazz with the manouche style, and its records are the foundation of gypsy jazz, the jazz manouche tradition that guitarists have kept playing ever since. The next generation of French guitarists named above, and later Fapy Lafertin, Raphaël Faÿs and Biréli Lagrène, built their playing on its example, and Grappelli's own late-career all-string groups were modelled on it.