El Nacional Venezuela Newspaper is a Venezuelan publishing company under the name C.A. Editorial El Nacional, most widely known for its El Nacional newspaper. It, along with Últimas Noticias and El Universal, are the most widely read and circulated daily national newspapers in the country, and it has an average of more than 80,000 papers distributed daily and 170,000 copies on weekends.It has traditionally had a center-left ideology, but has recently moved to the center although the paper supported the candidacy of Hugo Chavez in 1998. Current editor and proprietor Miguel Henrique Otero founded the Movimiento 2D opposition movement, which supports the opposition electoral coalition Mesa de la Unidad Democrática.

El Nacional was founded in August 1943 in Caracas by Miguel Otero Vizcarrondo and is directed by Chief Editorial Officer Miguel Henrique Otero, grandson of the founder, and by Chief Executive Officer Manuel Sucre.

The newspaper’s first director was poet Antonio Arráiz (1903–1962). In the newspaper have contributed many of the most recognized Venezuelan writers. Arturo Úslar Pietri, one of the most important intellectuals of the country and its director, wrote for more than fifty years in an opinion column in the newspaper. Former editors include José Ramón Medina and Miguel Otero Silva.

In 1961 an advertising boycott in opposition to the paper’s leftist views (its then editor, Miguel Otero Silva, had been a member of the Communist Party of Venezuela) nearly forced the paper into bankruptcy.