Abstract: A process for balancing a shaft, particularly a cardan shaft with an attached oscillation damper is shown. The oscillation damper consists of a hub attached to the shaft, a damper ring lying concentric to same, and elements elastically attached to the hub and damping ring. The imbalance of the entire system is determined on a balancing machine, and the radial runout of the damping ring is measured in parallel to same. An imbalance corresponding to the imbalance of the damping ring is determined from the radial runout, and the imbalance of the shaft without the damping ring is determined by calculation of the difference between the total imbalance and the imbalance of the damping ring. The balancing process according to the invention lowers production costs by reduction of processing time during balancing. At the same time, an improvement in function and an increase in service life of the oscillation damper is achieved.