diff --git a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.0.txt b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.0.txt
index 1079ec52338b9..bd4e02a7617f7 100644
--- a/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.0.txt
+++ b/doc/source/whatsnew/v0.17.0.txt
@@ -678,3 +678,4 @@ Bug Fixes
 - Bug in ``iloc`` allowing memory outside bounds of a Series to be accessed with negative integers (:issue:`10779`)
 - Bug in ``read_msgpack`` where encoding is not respected (:issue:`10580`)
 - Bug preventing access to the first index when using ``iloc`` with a list containing the appropriate negative integer (:issue:`10547`, :issue:`10779`)
+- Bug where ``pd.read_gbq`` throws ``ValueError`` when Bigquery returns zero rows (:issue:`10273`) 
diff --git a/pandas/io/gbq.py b/pandas/io/gbq.py
index 06ad8827a5642..79706ec0c2990 100644
--- a/pandas/io/gbq.py
+++ b/pandas/io/gbq.py
@@ -279,7 +279,7 @@ def _parse_data(schema, rows):
                                        field_type)
             page_array[row_num][col_num] = field_value
 
-    return DataFrame(page_array)
+    return DataFrame(page_array, columns=col_names)
 
 def _parse_entry(field_value, field_type):
     if field_value is None or field_value == 'null':
@@ -338,7 +338,10 @@ def read_gbq(query, project_id=None, index_col=None, col_order=None, reauth=Fals
         page = pages.pop()
         dataframe_list.append(_parse_data(schema, page))
 
-    final_df = concat(dataframe_list, ignore_index = True)
+    if len(dataframe_list)>0:
+        final_df = concat(dataframe_list, ignore_index = True)
+    else:
+        final_df =  _parse_data(schema,[])
 
     # Reindex the DataFrame on the provided column
     if index_col is not None:
diff --git a/pandas/io/tests/test_gbq.py b/pandas/io/tests/test_gbq.py
index 5417842d3f863..f04eeb03f790e 100644
--- a/pandas/io/tests/test_gbq.py
+++ b/pandas/io/tests/test_gbq.py
@@ -296,6 +296,13 @@ def test_download_dataset_larger_than_200k_rows(self):
         df = gbq.read_gbq("SELECT id FROM [publicdata:samples.wikipedia] GROUP EACH BY id ORDER BY id ASC LIMIT 200005", project_id=PROJECT_ID)
         self.assertEqual(len(df.drop_duplicates()), 200005)
 
+    def test_zero_rows(self):
+        # Bug fix for https://github.com/pydata/pandas/issues/10273
+        df = gbq.read_gbq("SELECT title, language  FROM [publicdata:samples.wikipedia] where timestamp=-9999999", project_id=PROJECT_ID)
+        expected_result = DataFrame(columns=['title', 'language'])
+        self.assert_frame_equal(df, expected_result)
+
+
 class TestToGBQIntegration(tm.TestCase):
     # This class requires bq.py to be installed for setup/teardown. 
     # It will also need to be preconfigured with a default dataset,