The Budyonny breed is a young breed in Russia.

The Budyonny was named after Marshal Semyon Budyonny, a Bolshevik cavalry commander who became famous during the Russian Revolution. The breed was created by Budyonny, a well-known horse breeder himself, in the early 1920s in the Rostov region of Russia with the intent of producing cavalry horses to replace those lost during and after World War I. The resulting horses were used in Russian cavalry divisions during World War II and after.

Budyonnys were bred from a cross of local Don and Chernomor mares and Thoroughbred stallions. The Chernomor is a type of Cossack horse similar to the Don, although smaller. They are descendants of the horses raised by Zaporozhian Cossacks, and were first bred around Krasnodar, north of the Caucasus Mountains. During the first round of breeding for the Budyonny horse, blood from Kirghiz and Kazakh horses was also used, but the progeny was found to be not as hardy or conformationally sound, and later the Budyonny was used to improve these two breeds.

In the 1950s an experiment was performed to gauge the ability of the Budyonny breed to adapt to harsh conditions without human help. A number of horses were turned loose on a large island in Manych Lake in the Rostov district. The horses have since survived and thrived, proving that they are capable of living in the wild for extended periods without human assistance.