The exploration of the Pacific Islands began with early Polynesian explorers, who had navigated and settled nearly all Pacific islands by 1200 CE.

 Asian navigators then ventured into Southeast Asia and the western Pacific. During the Middle Ages, Muslim traders established connections between the Middle East, East Africa, and the Asian Pacific coasts, reaching southern China and much of the Malay Archipelago. European contact with the Pacific commenced in 1512, when the Portuguese encountered its western edges, soon followed by the Spanish arriving from the American coast by the Spanish arriving from the American coast.

The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean occurred through the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, who travelled via the Lesser Sunda Islands to the Maluku Islands in 1512. This was followed by Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca.

The first contact of European navigators with the western edge of the Pacific Ocean was made by the Portuguese expeditions of António de Abreu and Francisco Serrão, via the Lesser Sunda Islands, to the Maluku Islands, in 1512, and with Jorge Álvares's expedition to southern China in 1513, both ordered by Afonso de Albuquerque from Malacca.

The Spanish explorer Balboa was the first European to sight the Pacific from America in 1513 after his expedition crossed the Isthmus of Panama and reached a new ocean. He named it Mar del Sur(literally, "Sea of the South" or "South Sea") because the ocean was to the south of the coast of the isthmus where he first observed the Pacific. Starting in 1519, Portuguese explorer Ferdinand Magellan sailed the Pacific East to West on a Castilian (Spanish) expedition, which concluded later with the first world circumnavigation by the Basque sailor Juan Sebastián Elcano. Magellan called the ocean Pacífico (or "Pacific" meaning, "peaceful") because, after sailing through the stormy seas off Patagonia, the expedition found calm waters. The ocean was often called the Sea of Magellan in his honour until the eighteenth century.

The most famous explorer of the Pacific Islands is considered to be Captain James Cook who is credited with being the first to document the vast region of the Pacific inhabited by people sharing a common cultural base. Other ‘firsts’ followed, notably Magellan and Vasco Núñez de Balboa.
 
Our top explorers are:
 

• James Cook: Considered one of the greatest explorers of the Pacific, he documented the cultural similarities across the Pacific islands. Captain Cook's three voyages in the 18th century were the height of European exploration of the Pacific and is responsible for discovering New Caledonia, Easter Island, and Tonga. 
• Ferdinand Magellan: The Portuguese explorer who led the first known European crossing of the Pacific Ocean, sailing across after rounding South America. 
• Vasco Núñez de Balboa: A Spanish explorer who became the first European to see the Pacific Ocean, sighting it from Panama. 
• John Byron: An Englishman who discovered islands in the Tuamotu, Cook, and Tokelau archipelagos. 
• Louis-Antoine de Bougainville: A Frenchman who sailed to Tahiti, Samoa, Vanuatu, New Guinea, and the Solomons. 
• Willem Schouten: A Dutch explorer who was the first to circumnavigate Cape Horn and access the Pacific Ocean. He discovered New Guinea and other islands. 
• Pedro Fernández de Quirós: Reached the northern Cook Islands, Tikopia, and the New Hebrides. 

 
Other explorers of the Pacific include Samuel Wallis, a British naval officer and explorer who made the first recorded visit by a European navigator to Tahiti and Philip Carteret, a British Rear-Admiral who participated in two of the Royal Navy's circumnavigation expeditions in 1764–66 and 1766–69.