The Yugoslavs were a relatively short-lived nationality that was created at the time of Yugoslavia. In general, they were ethnically a south Slavic people speaking a South Slavic language (most often Serbo-Croatian, the most widespread official language of socialist Yugoslavia).

The 1971 census recorded 273,077 Yugoslavs, or 1.33% of the total population. The 1981 census recorded 1,216,463 or 5.4% Yugoslavs.

In the 1991 census of Bosnia and Herzegovina, at that time a Yugoslav republic, as many as 6% of the people declared themselves to be Yugoslav. 4.25% of the population of the republic of Montenegro also declared themselves Yugoslav in the same census.

The most common reasons that people had for declaring themselves Yugoslavs included:

• hardcore Yugoslav patriotism, despite the fact that Yugoslavia at that time readily acknowledged that its population included several nations, not just a single Yugoslav one;
• mixed marriages — children of parents of two different ethnicities, raised wholly in the Yugoslav spirit;
• relatively minor nationalities — people among the Muslims by nationality or the Bunjevci did not have strong national affiliations.

Following the demise of Yugoslavia, most Yugoslavs switched back to more specific nationalities such as Serbs, Croats, Bosniaks, Slovenes, Macedonians, etc. Nevertheless, the concept has survived, mostly in Serbia and Montenegro, which kept the name "Yugoslavia" the longest, until 2003. In the 2002 census of Vojvodina, 49,881 people declared themselves to be Yugoslav.