Rumba is a dance term with two quite different meanings.

First, it means Cuban event of African style, organically related to the rumba genre of Afro-Cuban music. There are several styles of this rumba, the most common being the guaguancó.

Second, it refers to one of the ballroom dances which occurs in social dance and in international competitions. In this sense, rumba is the slowest of the five competition Latin and American dances: the paso doble, the samba, the cha-cha-chá and the jive being the others. This ballroom rumba was also danced in Cuba to a rhythm they call the bolero-son; the international style was derived from studies of dance in Cuba in the pre-revolutionary period.