This work presents a first broad and systematic grammar sketch of Bangala, a contact language of Central Africa spoken by approximately 2 to 3 million speakers in the northeastern parts of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Like Lingala, Bangala’s “sister language”, it emerged in the late 19th century from the pidginization of Bobangi in the context of very early colonial and missionary activities. Later introduced by the colonial state as a lingua franca, Bangala spread widely across areas north and north-east of the Congo River. The language has been shaped by these past pidginization processes as well as by large-scale language contact. It is spoken in the contact zone between Bantu and non-Bantu/non-Niger-Congo languages and extends across a highly multilingual area. Bangala reflects the heterogeneous backgrounds of its speakers, who use Bangala as one of the many languages in their complex linguistic repertoires. Especially among the younger generations, the data show varying degrees of influence from Lingala, to which many of them appear to be shifting. With this grammar sketch, the authors aim to provide a foundation for further and more in-depth analyses of the understudied language Bangala in all its complexities.