A measure on a locally compact group is called spread out if one of its convolution powers is not singular with respect to Haar measure. Using Markov chain theory, we conduct a detailed analysis of random walks on homogeneous spaces with spread out increment distribution. For finite volume spaces, we arrive at a complete picture of the asymptotics of the $n$-step distributions: They equidistribute towards Haar measure, often exponentially fast and locally uniformly in the starting position. In

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... ddition, many classical limit theorems are shown to hold. In the infinite volume case, we prove recurrence and a ratio limit theorem for symmetric spread out random walks on homogeneous spaces of at most quadratic growth. This settles one direction in a long-standing conjecture.