Haugschlag is a municipality in the district of Gmünd, in the Austrian state of Lower Austria. It lies in the Waldviertel, the forested northwestern quarter of Lower Austria that borders the Czech Republic.
The area is part of a landscape of rolling hills, farmland and woodland typical of the Waldviertel, and the municipality is made up of several small settlements rather than a single large town. Like other communities in the district of Gmünd, it is a rural, sparsely populated place whose economy has traditionally rested on agriculture and forestry.
Haugschlag's position close to the Czech border places it in a region whose character was shaped by the frontier: the district of Gmünd was long affected by its location on the edge of the former Iron Curtain, and cross-border links became more open after 1989. The municipality is administered from the town of Gmünd, the district's administrative centre.