Kalk Bay (Afrikaans: Kalkbaai) is a fishing village and suburb of Cape Town. It lies on the west coast of False Bay. Much of the town is built on the slopes of mountains bordering the sea. These mountains, which have peaks of Table Mountain Sandstone, form several valleys. The railway from Cape Town to Simon's Town passes through Kalk Bay, which has one station near the harbour.

Kalk Bay is adjacent to the historically connected suburb of St James, with the division between the two being largely formal. They share the Kalk Bay & St. James Ratepayers and Residents Association, which manages a heritage committee and cooperates with the government on matters of safety and conservation.

In 2018, Forbes magazine named the neighbourhood one of the "coolest in the world", describing it as a "seaside haven" that was attracting more than just the local creative community.

The history of the Kalk Bay area is difficult to separate from that of the wider False Bay region. It is likely that the area was inhabited by the Khoekhoe people for thousands of years before European settlement. An investigation of skeletons found in the coastal region has shown that the stature of these prehistoric people was within the range of modern Khoisan people. Middens found under cliff overhangs in the mountains above Kalk Bay indicate these sites may have been used for shelter, and archaeological evidence continues to be exposed through animal activity in the area.

The village of Kalk Bay was likely established by the Dutch East India Company in the 17th century. The first written mention of the name Kalkbaai (Lime Bay) was by Governor Simon van der Stel in 1687, during a three-week expedition to sound and chart False Bay. The name is derived from the Dutch and Afrikaans words for the deposits of mussel shells which were burnt by early settlers to produce lime.

The early fishing population consisted primarily of slaves from Bengal, Indonesia, and Ceylon. They gained their freedom in 1807, when slavery was made illegal in the British Empire. This community was largely Muslim, leading to the construction of a mosque in 1846.

Under British rule, whaling became a major industry. Beginning around 1806, it drove settlement in the area and became the third-highest income-earning industry in the Cape, behind agriculture and wine-making. The whaling stations were relocated from Simon's Town to the coastline between Kalk Bay and St James after residents complained about the smell. By 1902, whaling at Kalk Bay had ceased as whale stocks became depleted.

The population was bolstered by the arrival of Filipino fishermen. According to local oral history, the first arrivals may have been as early as 1839, when a fisherman named Staggie Fernandez swam ashore from a ship in Simon's Town and walked to Kalk Bay. Other accounts state that a shipwrecked Filipino crew settled in Kalk Bay in the mid-1840s. The community grew significantly in the 1850s when refugees fled the Philippines to escape anti-Spanish riots. The predominantly Catholic Filipino community is considered the origin of the separation between Kalk Bay and St James, as the latter contains the area's only Catholic church.