Municipality serving as a temporary seat of government
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.
Palestine has its provisional capital as the city of Ramallah due to the current Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem. Although officially supposed to be a provisional setup, the role of Ramallah as administrative capital of Palestine has not changed since the year 1993 when the Palestinian Authority was created.
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.
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 being constructed in the Little Bay area, but has been plagued by multiple delays.
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. 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 have 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. In 2004 the ROC bureau that maintains maps stopped censorship of privately published maps showing Taipei as the capital.
The provincial capital of Fujian, Republic of China was moved from Fuzhou to Jincheng, Kinmen Island after the evacuation. A year after the 1955 First Taiwan Strait Crisis, it was moved out of Fujian Province completely to Xindian, Taiwan Island and only military personnel were allowed onto Kinmen. After the end of the Cold War, it was moved back to Jincheng (before provinces were de facto abolished in 2018). A similar situation arose[citation needed] in Zhejiang Province before all of the province fell under the control of the PRC in 1955.
By contrast, the Belgian government in exile continued to operate out of London while administering the Belgian Congo, and did not set up a temporary capital in the Belgian Congo.