内村航平
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 eight finalists from 2012 returned: gold medalist Epke Zonderland of the Netherlands, silver medalist Fabian Hambüchen of Germany, fourth-place finisher Zhang Chenglong of China, and fifth-place finisher Danell Leyva of the United States. Kōhei Uchimura of Japan was the reigning (2015) world champion, with Leyva the runner-up and Manrique Larduet of Cuba third. Zonderland had won in 2013 and 2014; Uchimura had reached the podium in those years as well.