The VIKING survey with VISTA (ESO programme ID 179.A-2004) is a wide area (eventually 1500 sq.degrees), intermediate-depth (5-sigma detection limit J=21 on Vega system) near-infrared imaging survey, in the five broadband filters Z, Y, J, H, Ks. The planned sky coverage is at high galactic latitudes, and includes two main stripes 70x10{deg}^2^ each: one in the South Galactic cap near Dec~-30{deg}, and one near Dec~0{deg} in the North galactic cap; in addition, there are two smaller outrigger patches called GAMA09 and CFHLS-W1. Science goals include z>6.5 quasars, extreme brown dwarfs, and multiwavelength coverage and identifications for a range of other imaging surveys, notably VST-KIDS and Herschel-ATLAS. This first public data release of data taken between the 12th of November 2009 and the 13th of February 2011 includes 151 tiles with complete coverage in all five VIKING filters (55 in GAMA09/12/14, 91 in SGP and 5 in CFHLS-W1) i.e. 226 square degrees, and includes approximately 14,773,385 total sources (including low-reliability single-band detections) and the imaging and source lists total 314.4GB. The coverage in each of the five sub-areas is not completely contiguous but any inter-tile gaps are relatively small. More details can be found in the accompanying documentation: viking_cat_dr1.pdf Data origin: Data originate from the ESO Science Archive Facility and went through the Phase 3 content validation process.