Let G be a simply-connected semisimple algebraic group over an algebraically closed field of characteristic p, assumed to be larger than the Coxeter number. The "support variety" of a G-module M is a certain closed subvariety of the nilpotent cone of G, defined in terms of cohomology for the first Frobenius kernel G 1 . In the 1990s, Humphreys proposed a conjectural description of the support varieties of tilting modules; this conjecture has been proved for G = SLn in earlier work of the second author.In this paper, we show that for any G, the support variety of a tilting module always contains the variety predicted by Humphreys, and that they coincide (i.e., the Humphreys conjecture is true) when p is sufficiently large. We also prove variants of these statements involving "relative support varieties."1.2. The Humphreys conjecture. We fix a Borel subgroup B ⊂ G and a maximal torus T ⊂ G, denote by X the character lattice of T , and let X + ⊂ X be the subset of dominant weights (for the choice of positive roots such that B is the P.A.