A temporary capital or a provisional capital is a city or town chosen by a
government as an interim base of operations due to some difficulty in retaining or establishing control of a different metropolitan area. The most common circumstances leading to this are either a
civil war, where control of the capital is contested, or during an
invasion, where the designated capital is taken or threatened.
By definition, a temporary capital is located somewhere on the country's territory, as opposed to a
capital-in-exile located on the territory of a different country. However, a country's capital may move in and out of exile over the course of a conflict.
The following list is sorted by the most recent date the temporary capital's status existed.
Due to the Russo-Ukrainian War, the capital of
Donetsk Oblast was de facto moved from
Donetsk to
Mariupol in June 2014, then to
Kramatorsk in October 2014, where it currently is.
For reasons other than war
Brades acts as the de facto temporary capital of
Montserrat since 1998, after the de jure capital of Montserrat at
Plymouth in the south of the island was abandoned in 1997 after it was buried by the eruptions of the
Soufriere Hills volcano in 1995. Interim government buildings have since been built at Brades, becoming the new temporary capital in 1998. The move is intended to be temporary, but it has remained the island's de facto capital ever since. A new official capital is now being constructed in the
Little Bay area.[2]
21st century
Lviv in western
Ukraine was a de facto temporary capital of
Ukraine during the
Battle of Kyiv at the start of the
Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, with several other governments relocating their embassies.[3][4] The embassies were moved back to
Kyiv after the battle concluded in a Ukrainian victory.
Germany after 1945 considered
Berlin to remain the German capital. But due to the onset of the Cold War Berlin itself was divided and 161 kilometers (100 miles) beyond the
Inner German Border within the Soviet-controlled zone that would soon become the
German Democratic Republic. As a result,
Bonn was established as a temporary capital for the
Federal Republic of Germany until the two countries
reunited in 1990. The
Federal Republic of Germany's government and the bulk of its offices has since moved to Berlin, but a large portion of its offices remain in Bonn. (The
German Basic Law has only mentioned the capital since 2008.)
The
Constitution of the Republic of China does not mention a de jure capital, leaving the issue to other official texts, which were inconsistent initially. For example, an official text in 1967 declared Taipei to be the "wartime capital", one from 1969 and one from 1975 declared Taipei to be the "capital", and one from 1979 declared Nanjing to be the "national capital". From 1982 onward, official documents have consistently declared Taipei to be the capital. Textbooks published by
Taiwan's Ministry of Education stopped describing Nanjing as the capital in 2002.[7]
Following the
Fall of France,
Free France initially established a capital-in-exile in
London. As it recaptured territory, the de facto capital was moved to
Brazzaville, followed by
Algiers, and finally back to
Paris.