Rapid spread of African swine fever virus (ASFV), causing severe disease with often high fatality rates in Eurasian suids, prevails as a threat for pig populations and dependent industries world-wide. Although advancing scientific progress continually enhances our understanding of ASFV pathogenesis, major alternative transmission routes for ASFV have yet to be assessed. Here, we demonstrate that ASFV can efficiently be transferred from infected boars to naïve recipient gilts through artificial insemination (AI). Modern pork industries resort to semen acquired from boar studs, which often supply many sow herds spread across the country. This inevitably bears the risk of ASFV being distributed nationwide or even beyond via contaminated semen if a boar stud would be affected. Daily blood and semen collection from four boars after intramuscular (IM) inoculation with ASFV strain ‘Estonia 2014’ resulted in detection of ASFV genome in the semen as early as 2 days post inoculation (dpi), in blood at 1 dpi while semen quality remained largely unaffected. PCR results and extractions were shown to be sensitive on semen, blood and oral fluid samples using commercial kits. Ultimately, after insemination with extended semen, 7 of 14 gilts were ASFV positive by 7 days post insemination, but all gilts were ASFV positive by 35 days post insemination. Ten of 14 gilts aborted implanted embryos upon fever development. A proportion of fetuses showed both abnormalities and replication of ASFV in fetal tissues. Thus, we do not only present evidence for efficient transmission of ASFV to gilts via AI, but also to implanted embryos, underlining the critical role that boar semen could play in ASFV transmission.