List of Famous people born in Žilina region, First Czechoslovak Republic

Peter Sagan is a Slovak professional road bicycle racer, who currently rides for UCI WorldTeam Bora–Hansgrohe. Sagan had a successful junior cyclo-cross and mountain bike racing career, winning the Junior Mountain Bike World Championship in 2008, before moving to road racing.

Peter Lorre was a Hungarian-American actor. Lorre began his stage career in Vienna before moving to Germany where he worked first on the stage, then in film in Berlin in the late 1920s and early 1930s. Lorre caused an international sensation in the German film M (1931), directed by Fritz Lang, in which he portrayed a serial killer who preys on little girls.

Stanley Mikita was a Slovak-born Canadian professional ice hockey player for the Chicago Black Hawks of the National Hockey League, generally regarded as the best centre of the 1960s. In 2017, he was named one of the 100 Greatest NHL Players. He was the first Slovak born player to win the Stanley Cup, which he did in 1961.

Petra Vlhová is a Slovak World Cup alpine ski racer who specialises in the technical events of slalom and giant slalom. Vlhová won the World Cup overall title in 2021, becoming the first Slovak skier to achieve this feat.

Martin Dúbravka is a Slovak professional footballer who plays as a goalkeeper for Premier League club Newcastle United and the Slovakia national team.

Tomáš Hubočan is a Slovak professional footballer who plays as a defender for Omonia Nicosia.

Dr. Jozef Vengloš was a Slovak professional football player and manager. He held a doctorate in Physical Education and also specialised in Psychology. He had been selected by FIFA on various occasions to lecture at the FIFA academies throughout the world.

Jozef Gašpar Tiso was a Slovak politician and Roman Catholic priest who was president of the Slovak Republic, a client state of Nazi Germany during World War II, from 1939 to 1945. In 1947, after the war, he was executed for war crimes and crimes against humanity in Bratislava.

Marek Mintál is a Slovak retired footballer. He is the current manager of 1. FC Nürnberg II and assistant coach of the Slovakia national football team.

Andrej Hlinka was a Slovak Catholic priest, journalist, banker, and politician, one of the most important Slovak public activists in Czechoslovakia before Second World War. He was the leader of the Hlinka's Slovak People's Party, papal chamberlain, inducted papal protonotary, member of the National Assembly of Czechoslovakia, and chairman of the St. Vojtech Fellowship.