Timeline of national independence

This list includes currently extant sovereign states and states with limited recognition that have declared independence from a predecessor state or an occupying power. Various states have never declared independence throughout their formations and are therefore not included in the main list on this page. This includes states formed through the unification of multiple independent entities as well as those that once declared independence but whose most recent establishment occurred through other means. These countries are given on a separate list below. The list does not include duplicated entries for states that have declared independence multiple times, only using the most recent one. Subnational entities are usually not included in the list. Some of these dates of independence might be disputed, as many of them are not the official independence days nationally recognized as such.