NC 96 is a North Carolinian state highway that is continuation of Virginia's State Route 96. The Virginia route is signed east/west while the NC route is signed north/south. It is mostly a rural highway linking several small-to-medium sized towns in central North Carolina. Like many NC routes, it has numerous concurrencies with other highways, including NC 49 which also continues across the Virginia border, US 158 and US 15 in Oxford, US 301 in Smithfield and Selma, and US 701.

NC 96 is the second route to bear number 96. The first route was originally NC 562. It got its modern number in 1940, when border-crossing routes were renumbered to match their Virginia counterparts. The original routing ended at North Carolina Highway 56. It was extended in 1952 to its current terminus.