Gianfranco Folena (9 April 1920 – 14 February 1992) was an Italian linguist, philologist, and academic.

Born in Savigliano in Piedmont in 1920, from a Tuscan family. He attended the Scuola Normale Superiore in Pisa along with Giorgio Pasquali. After his involvement in the war and imprisonment in India, he graduated in Florence, with Bruno Migliorini. He held the chair of Romance Philology and then of History of the Italian Language at the University of Padua until the end of his teaching activity in 1990.