A novel meta-heuristic nature-inspired optimization algorithm known as Groundwater Flow Algorithm (GWFA) is proposed in this paper. GWFA is inspired from the movement of groundwater from recharge areas to discharge areas. It follows a position update procedure guided by Darcy’s law which provides a mathematical framework of groundwater flow. The proposed optimization algorithm has been evaluated on 23 benchmark functions. The significance of the results is statistically validated using Wilcoxon rank-sum, Friedman and Kruskal Walis tests. To prove the robustness of the algorithm, it has been further applied on several standard engineering problems. From these exhaustive experiments, it has been observed that the proposed GWFA can outperform many state-of-the-art optimization algorithms.