Preferred crystallographic orientation relationships between nickel films grown on (100) cubic-zirconia substrates were studied by a variety of electron diffraction techniques. The predominant orientation relationship found was Ni (111)//ZrO2 (100); Ni [(1) over bar 10]//ZrO2 [010], while a secondary cube-on-cube orientation relationship was also observed. Orientation imaging microscopy (OIM) shows the different orientations to be distributed homogeneously across the substrate. The near coincident site lattice (NCSL) theory was employed to rationalize the observed orientation relationships from a geometrical perspective. The experimentally observed orientations do lead to small NCSL unit cells, but not always the smallest possible. It is also found that the choice of sublattice for calculating the NCSL is significant in this system, since the Zr and O sublattices of cubic-zirconia have different atomic spacings and coordination.