You can just push empty to delete remote branch (note the nothing before ":"): git push origin :branch_name The normal push is equivalent to (your current HEAD is branched from remote "branch_name") git push origin HEAD:branch_name On Saturday, 17 December 2022 at 05:51:25 GMT+8, Gerald Pfeifer <gerald(a)pfeifer.com> wrote: On Tue, 13 Dec 2022, Gerald Pfeifer wrote: : I believe I can now answer my own question, having dug into it a bit. The invocation above is for *local* branches, branches in the local checkout. To remove a *remote* branch, for example where a merge request was not accepted or was "bad" for some reason, we need to use `git push` instead of `git branch`:   % git push origin --delete dll_soinit.c-stddef.h I plan on adding this to the Wiki in a few days. Any suggestions/concerns? Gerald