In this paper, a new approach for fusion of multi-spectral (MS) and panchromatic (Pan) images based on 2D-discrete fractional Fourier transform (2D-DFRFT) is proposed. The proposed technique is closer in approach to the other filtering-based pansharpening schemes existing in the literature. In the proposed method histogram equalized Pan image is transformed using the 2D-DFRFT and further used to generate the pansharpened image using appropriate pansharpening rule. The angle parameters associated with the 2D-DFRFT provide additional degrees of freedom which are optimized by single-objective particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm for finding better pansharpening results. Simulation results of the proposed technique carried out in MATLAB are presented for IKONOS and GeoEye-1 satellite images and compared with existing fusion methods in terms of both visual perception and objective metrics such as Q-index (Q4), Spectral Angle Mapper (SAM), relative dimensionless global error (ERGAS) and quality with-no reference (QNR). It is observed that the proposed pansharpening scheme provides improved spectral and spatial quality as compared with the existing schemes. The effects of aliasing and mis-registration errors on the proposed method are also investigated and compared with existing pansharpening methods. It is seen that the proposed method is robust against aliasing and mis-registration errors. © 2019, © 2019 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.