MQTT is a messaging protocol that allows devices to publish and subscribe to messages or "topics" through a broker. Publishers connect to the broker to publish content to topics, subscribers connect to the same broker to subscribe to topics they are interested in. The broker ensures published content is distributed to subscribers. Topics use a tree structure separated by forward slashes, and wildcards like # can subscribe to entire branches. An example shows sensors publishing temperature data to topics and a subscriber using wildcards to subscribe to multiple sensor topics.