Inheritance allows a subclass to inherit methods and properties from a parent class. The main types of inheritance are single, multiple, multilevel, hierarchical, and hybrid inheritance. Method overriding allows a child class to provide its own implementation of a method defined in the parent class, while maintaining the same method signature. Abstract classes define abstract methods that must be implemented in child classes, allowing for common interfaces. Access specifiers like public, protected, and private are used to control access to class methods and properties.