Pahiatua is a rural service town in the northern Wairarapa of New Zealand. Founded to take advantage of the Napier-Wellington railway, the bypass of the township by said railway meant the township had to grow in other ways. The surrounding area of dairy and sheep farming supports the small community of 2,600. Pahiatua is two and a half hours from the nation's capital Wellington.

Sir Keith Holyoake, Prime Minister and later Governor General of New Zealand, was born in Pahiatua.