Necessary conditions for a Hamilton cycle 2026-10-14
A Hamiltonian graph must be a connected graph and have minimum degree : each vertex has two distinct neighbours on its Hamilton cycle. It also has no cut vertex. Indeed, deleting any vertex from the Hamilton cycle leaves a graph path through every remaining vertex, so the remaining graph is connected. These are quick ways to rule out a Hamilton cycle.[ref]
Hamilton Cycles. Diestel, Graph Theory, §10.1, printed pp. 323–324: necessary minimum degree two and 2-connectivity
Even these conditions together are not sufficient: the complete bipartite graph is connected, has minimum degree two and no cut vertex, but has no Hamilton cycle. Every graph cycle in a bipartite graph alternates between its two parts, using equally many vertices from each; it cannot use all two and all three.
In the other direction, Dirac's theorem gives a sufficient condition: a finite simple graph with and has a Hamilton cycle. Failure of this inequality proves nothing by itself: the cycle graph has a Hamilton cycle despite .[ref]