Gymnastics at the 2016 Summer Olympics – Men's parallel bars

This was the 24th appearance of the event, which is one of the five apparatus events held every time there were apparatus events at the Summer Olympics (no apparatus events were held in 1900, 1908, 1912, or 1920). Four of the nine finalists from 2012 returned: silver medalist Marcel Nguyen of Germany, fifth-place finisher Daniel Corral of Mexico, eighth-place finisher Yusuke Tanaka of Japan, and ninth-place finisher Zhang Chenglong of China. The field was studded with stars. 2011 world champion Danell Leyva of the United States had been favored in 2012 before failing to make the final, had come in second in the 2014 world championship, and had been elevated from reserve after a teammate's injury. The 2013 world champions were Kōhei Uchimura of Japan and Lin Chaopan of China. The 2014 world champion (and 2015 runner-up) was Oleg Vernyayev of Ukraine. You Hao of China was the 2015 world champion.[1]

Cyprus, Lithuania, Monaco, and Turkey each made their debut in the men's parallel bars. The United States made its 22nd appearance, most of any nation; the Americans had missed only the inaugural 1896 event and the boycotted 1980 Games.

Qualification for the men's artistic gymnastics in 2008 was based primarily on the 2015 World Artistic Gymnastics Championships. The top 8 teams at the world championships could send a full team of 5 gymnasts to the Olympics. The next 8 teams (#9 through #16) competed in the 2012 Gymnastics Olympic Test Event, with the top 4 of those teams also qualifying a team of 5 gymnasts for the Olympics. The individual apparatus medalists from the World Championships also qualified, if their nation had not already qualified a team. There were places reserved for host country and continental representation, and the Tripartite Commission made an invitation. The quota of 98 gymnasts was then filled through the individual all-around rankings at the Test Event, with each nation able to qualify only one gymnast in that manner (though this one gymnast could be added to the world championship apparatus medalists—for example, Romania qualified Marian Drăgulescu as silver medalist in the vault and Andrei Muntean through the Test Event).

The top 8 qualifiers in the qualification phase (limit two per NOC), based on combined score of each apparatus, advanced to the individual all-around final. The finalists performed on each apparatus again. Qualification scores were then ignored, with only final round scores counting.

All times are Brasília Time (UTC-03:00)