Pateley Bridge (known locally as Pateley) is a market town in the civil parish of High and Low Bishopside, in Nidderdale, in the county and district of North Yorkshire, England. Historically part of the West Riding of Yorkshire, it lies on the River Nidd. It is in the Yorkshire Dales and just outside the Yorkshire Dales National Park.

The town has the oldest sweet shop in the world. Established in 1827, it is housed in one of the earliest buildings in Pateley Bridge, dating from 1661. Pateley Bridge is also the home of the Nidderdale Museum.

The last Dales agricultural show of the year, the Nidderdale Show, is held annually on the showground by the River Nidd. The show attracts more than 14,000 visitors each year.

The town is within the Nidderdale National Landscape, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The town was listed in both the 2017 and 2018 Sunday Times reports on Best Places to Live in northern England. The local tourist authority bills it as "the perfect place to start your exploration of the Yorkshire Dales".

In the early Middle Ages the site of Pateley lay in lands of the Archbishop of York, which came to be known as Bishopside. In the 12th century the principal settlement in Bishopside was at Wilsill, rather than Pateley. Pateley was first recorded in 1175 (though the document survives in a later copy), as Patleiagate, with 14th century forms including Patheleybrig(ge). The final elements are clear, deriving from Old Norse gata ('street') and the northern dialect form brig ('bridge') respectively. The bridge is Pateley Bridge over the River Nidd.

There is more debate about the Pateley section of the name: the usual explanation is Old English pæþ ('path') in the genitive plural form paða + lēah ('open ground, clearing in a forest'); paða lēah would mean "woodland clearing of the paths", referring to paths up Nidderdale and from Ripon to Craven, which intersected here. However, the Pateley name forms competed in the Middle Ages with forms like Padlewath (1227) and Patheslayewathe which could be from Middle English *padil ('a shallow place in water') + Old Norse vath ('ford') and it could be that they owe something to this name. The local story that the name comes from 'Pate', an old Yorkshire dialect word for 'Badger', is incorrect.

In 1320 the Archbishop of York granted a charter for a market and fair at Pateley. From the 14th century until the early part of the 20th century, Scotgate Ash Quarry despatched hard-wearing sandstone from its site on the northern flank above Pateley Bridge. In 1862 the railway arrived in Nidderdale, and the stone was then exported by train and was used in railway platforms, national buildings and harbour walls. Scotgate Ash Quarry closed in 1915.

Pateley Bridge has had two railway stations. Between 1862 and the Beeching cuts in 1964, Pateley Bridge railway station was the terminus of the railway line running up Nidderdale from Nidd Valley Junction, near Harrogate. Between 1907 and 1937, the Nidd Valley Light Railway ran farther up the dale from a separate railway station. Access is now by road, with an hourly bus service from Harrogate.