The Pacific Highway is a national highway and major transport route of 790 kilometres (490 mi) along the east coast of Australia from Sydney to Brisbane. It is an integral part of Highway 1 which circumnavigates the Australian continent. At its inception, the highway was a single carriageway between Sydney and Brisbane. In Australian culture and as a tourist drive, it remains so. Over time, segments of the highway have been upgraded, realigned, or renamed. Between 1996 and 2020, sections of the highway were upgraded to controlled-access highway (motorway) standards.

The Pacific Highway is divided into the following sections:

Since the most recent declaration of the highway in the April 2010 gazette, the New South Wales section of the highway is officially made up of four separate sections: Warringah Freeway, North Sydney to Gosford Interchange near Kariong; Henry Parry Drive, Wyoming to Pacific Motorway at Ourimbah Interchange; Wyong Road, Tuggerah to Hunter Street, Newcastle; and Maitland Road, Warabrook to the state border with Queensland. Since February 2013, the freeway section of the highway north of Brunswick Heads is also concurrently gazetted and is named and signposted Pacific Motorway. South of here, the section between Brunswick Heads and Bruxner Highway near Ballina is also signposted Pacific Motorway, however, it was not declared as such in the gazette as of February 2019, therefore it remains as only Pacific Highway in the gazette. Former sections of the highway removed from the gazette, such as between Gosford and Tuggerah, are still signposted as Pacific Highway.

Major cities and towns along Pacific Highway include: Gosford, Wyong, Newcastle, Taree, Port Macquarie, Kempsey, Coffs Harbour, Grafton, Ballina and Byron Bay, all in New South Wales; and Gold Coast in Queensland.

Major river crossings include the Hawkesbury, Hunter, Myall (east of Bulahdelah), Manning (south of Coopernook), Hastings (west of Port Macquarie), Macleay (east of Frederickton), Nambucca (near Macksville), Bellinger (near Raleigh), Clarence (via the Harwood Bridge near Maclean), Richmond (at Ballina), Brunswick, and Tweed rivers.

From Sydney, Pacific Highway starts as the continuation of Bradfield Highway at the northern end of the Sydney Harbour Bridge, immediately north of the Sydney central business district, and is the main route as far as the suburb of Wahroonga. Between the Harbour Bridge and the Gore Hill Freeway at Artarmon, the highway has no route number. From Gore Hill Freeway to Wahroonga, it is designated as route A1. When the Warringah Freeway was constructed in the late 1960s, southbound traffic was diverted through North Sydney via Mount Street, and in October 1985 it was redirected via Berry Street.

From Wahroonga Kariong, the Pacific Highway runs mostly parallel to the freeway, before diverting through the Central Coast via Gosford and Wyong. The section from Cowan to Kariong follows a winding scenic route with speed limits of 60 or 70 km/h (37 or 43 mph).

The section of the former Pacific Highway from the Wiseman’s Ferry Road junction at Kariong to the Gosford exit near Brian McGowan Bridge was redesignated as the Central Coast Highway, A49. North of Gosford, the highway continues without a route number through the Central Coast suburbs of Ourimbah and Wyong, before connecting with a spur of the Pacific Motorway near Doyalson, signed as route A43. At this point, the Pacific Highway is signed as route A43 for most of its length, forming a four- to six-lane regional highway that passes Lake Macquarie and continues through the suburbs of Lake Macquarie and Newcastle before rejoining route A1 at Hexham.