The Portland Press Herald is a daily newspaper based in South Portland, Maine, with a statewide readership. The Press Herald mainly serves southern Maine and is focused on the greater metropolitan area of Portland. It is the most distributed newspaper in the state of Maine.

Founded in 1862, its roots extend to Maine's earliest newspapers, the Falmouth Gazette & Weekly Advertiser, started in 1785, and the Eastern Argus, first published in Portland in 1803. For most of the 20th century, it was the cornerstone of Guy Gannett Communications, before being sold to The Seattle Times Company in 1998.

Since 2023, it has been a part of the Maine Trust for Local News, a nonprofit group run by the National Trust for Local News that includes four other daily newspapers and 17 weekly newspapers.

The Portland Daily Press was founded in June 1862 by J. T. Gilman, Joseph B. Hall, and Newell A. Foster as a new Republican paper. Its first issue, published on June 23, 1862, announced strong support for Abraham Lincoln and condemned slavery as "the foulest blot upon our national character." Its offices, along with the offices of all the newspapers in the city, were destroyed on July 4, 1866, in Portland's Great Fire. On the morning of July 6, the Portland Daily Press published a double-sided handbill about the fire.

The paper quickly gained the largest circulation in Portland, and was one of five daily newspapers in the city to survive to the 20th century. In 1904, the paper was bought by a syndicate of Maine Republicans, including Henry B. Cleaves and gubernatorial candidate Joseph Homan Manley, who the paper had previously opposed.

In 1921, the Portland Daily Press was merged with the Portland Herald to form the Portland Press Herald in a sale of the Press from then U.S. Senator Frederick Hale to Guy P. Gannett, who had bought the Herald earlier the same year. The first edition of the Portland Press Herald was published on November 21, 1921. The Press Herald's circulation skyrocketed in the first year of Gannett's ownership, when the paper sold for two cents; circulation went from a little over 18,000 to nearly 29,000. Under Gannett's ownership, the traditionally pro-Republican newspaper adopted a balanced editorial approach; during the 1922 gubernatorial campaign, the newspaper published Democratic candidate William Robinson Pattangall's criticism of the Republican incumbent, Governor Percival Baxter. In a letter to readers, Gannett wrote, "The American people think for themselves. They want and should be given the news and all the news fully and uncolored by any personal or political consideration."

In the 1920s, Gannett's media empire in Maine grew: he purchased the Portland Evening Express and Daily Advertiser in 1925 (whose name he shortened to Evening Express) and by 1929 also bought Augusta's Kennebec Journal and Waterville's Central Maine Morning Sentinel.

In 1923, Gannett built a new building to house all of the paper's operations on 390 Congress Street across from Portland City Hall.