diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.24.0.rst b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.24.0.rst
index a2abda019812a..3429bcb8bd5cd 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.24.0.rst
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.24.0.rst
@@ -1313,12 +1313,14 @@ Datetimelike
 - Bug in :class:`DatetimeIndex` where calling ``np.array(dtindex, dtype=object)`` would incorrectly return an array of ``long`` objects (:issue:`23524`)
 - Bug in :class:`Index` where passing a timezone-aware :class:`DatetimeIndex` and `dtype=object` would incorrectly raise a ``ValueError`` (:issue:`23524`)
 - Bug in :class:`Index` where calling ``np.array(dtindex, dtype=object)`` on a timezone-naive :class:`DatetimeIndex` would return an array of ``datetime`` objects instead of :class:`Timestamp` objects, potentially losing nanosecond portions of the timestamps (:issue:`23524`)
+- Bug in :func:`to_datetime` which would raise an (incorrect) ``ValueError`` when called with a date far into the future and the ``format`` argument specified instead of raising ``OutOfBoundsDatetime`` (:issue:`23830`)
 - Bug in :class:`Categorical.__setitem__` not allowing setting with another ``Categorical`` when both are undordered and have the same categories, but in a different order (:issue:`24142`)
 - Bug in :func:`date_range` where using dates with millisecond resolution or higher could return incorrect values or the wrong number of values in the index (:issue:`24110`)
 - Bug in :class:`DatetimeIndex` where constructing a :class:`DatetimeIndex` from a :class:`Categorical` or :class:`CategoricalIndex` would incorrectly drop timezone information (:issue:`18664`)
 - Bug in :class:`DatetimeIndex` and :class:`TimedeltaIndex` where indexing with ``Ellipsis`` would incorrectly lose the index's ``freq`` attribute (:issue:`21282`)
 - Clarified error message produced when passing an incorrect ``freq`` argument to :class:`DatetimeIndex` with ``NaT`` as the first entry in the passed data (:issue:`11587`)
 
+
 Timedelta
 ^^^^^^^^^
 - Bug in :class:`DataFrame` with ``timedelta64[ns]`` dtype division by ``Timedelta``-like scalar incorrectly returning ``timedelta64[ns]`` dtype instead of ``float64`` dtype (:issue:`20088`, :issue:`22163`)
diff --git a/pandas/_libs/tslib.pyx b/pandas/_libs/tslib.pyx
index 3f2b49d141e18..d60d926e38701 100644
--- a/pandas/_libs/tslib.pyx
+++ b/pandas/_libs/tslib.pyx
@@ -599,11 +599,9 @@ cpdef array_to_datetime(ndarray[object] values, str errors='raise',
                                 iresult[i] = NPY_NAT
                                 continue
                             elif is_raise:
-                                raise ValueError("time data {val} doesn't "
-                                                 "match format specified"
-                                                 .format(val=val))
+                                raise
                             return values, tz_out
-
+                        
                         try:
                             py_dt = parse_datetime_string(val,
                                                           dayfirst=dayfirst,
@@ -661,7 +659,7 @@ cpdef array_to_datetime(ndarray[object] values, str errors='raise',
                     else:
                         raise TypeError("{typ} is not convertible to datetime"
                                         .format(typ=type(val)))
-
+                        
             except OutOfBoundsDatetime:
                 if is_coerce:
                     iresult[i] = NPY_NAT
@@ -671,9 +669,7 @@ cpdef array_to_datetime(ndarray[object] values, str errors='raise',
                     # dateutil parser will return incorrect result because
                     # it will ignore nanoseconds
                     if is_raise:
-                        raise ValueError("time data {val} doesn't "
-                                         "match format specified"
-                                         .format(val=val))
+                        raise
                     assert is_ignore
                     return values, tz_out
                 raise
diff --git a/pandas/tests/indexes/datetimes/test_tools.py b/pandas/tests/indexes/datetimes/test_tools.py
index 13f9648d46216..7cd781330a461 100644
--- a/pandas/tests/indexes/datetimes/test_tools.py
+++ b/pandas/tests/indexes/datetimes/test_tools.py
@@ -960,6 +960,17 @@ def test_to_datetime_barely_out_of_bounds(self):
         with pytest.raises(OutOfBoundsDatetime):
             to_datetime(arr)
 
+    def test_to_datetime_out_of_bounds_with_format_arg(self):
+        # GH#23830 raise the correct exception when
+        # the format argument is passed.
+        msg = r"Out of bounds nanosecond timestamp"
+        with pytest.raises(
+                OutOfBoundsDatetime,
+                match=msg
+        ):
+            to_datetime("2417-10-27 00:00:00",
+                        format="%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S")
+
     @pytest.mark.parametrize('cache', [True, False])
     def test_to_datetime_iso8601(self, cache):
         result = to_datetime(["2012-01-01 00:00:00"], cache=cache)