An exposure apparatus for irradiating exposure light onto a surface of an object to be exposed applied with a resist to form a pattern on the surface, wherein near-field light is used as the exposure light. The apparatus includes an alignment system for performing alignment using the near-field light, the alignment system detecting position information of the object to be exposed by irradiating light from an illumination device onto an alignment mark formed on the surface of the object to be exposed, and an alignment probe for detecting near-field light in the vicinity of the alignment mark.