List of heads of state and government who died in office

This is a list of heads of state and government who died in office, most often from illness. It only includes the heads of the state or government in the republican countries who died in office due to natural causes and does not include royal heads of state (e.g. kings, queens, emirs, or sultans) or heads of state or government who were assassinated, murdered, committed suicide, killed in battle, executed, or who died as a result of an accident. Heads of state and government who fit these categories are listed elsewhere.

The list is in chronological order. The name is listed first, followed by the name of the office the person held at the time of death, and the year of death.

Prior to 1850

• Lord Wilmington, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1743)
• Henry Pelham, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1754)
• Lord Rockingham, Prime Minister of Great Britain (1782)
• Pedro de Melo, viceroy of the Río de la Plata (1797)
• Charles Leclerc, Governor of Saint-Domingue (1802)
• Joaquín del Pino y Rozas, Viceroy of the Río de la Plata (1804)
• William Pitt the Younger, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1806)
• Alexandre Pétion, President of Haiti (1818)
• George Canning, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1827)
• Casimir Pierre Perier, Prime Minister of France (1832)
• Felipe Santiago Salaverry, President of Peru (1836)
• José Gaspar Rodríguez de Francia, Supreme Dictator of Paraguay (1840)
• Agustín Gamarra, President of Peru (1841)
• William Henry Harrison, President of the United States (1841)
• Philippe Guerrier, President of Haiti (1845)
• Jean-Baptiste Riché, President of Haiti (1847)

1850-1899

• Zachary Taylor, President of the United States (1850)
• Felix Schwarzenberg, Prime Minister of Austria (1852)
• Henri Druey, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1855)
• Josef Munzinger, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1855)
• Stefano Franscini, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1857)
• Carl Edvard Rotwitt, Prime Minister of Denmark (1860)
• Camillo Benso di Cavour, President of the Council of Ministers of Italy (1861)
• Jonas Furrer, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1861)
• Carlos Antonio López, President of Paraguay (1862)
• Rafael Carrera, President of Guatemala (1865)
• Lord Palmerston, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1865)
• Sir Étienne Paschal Taché, Joint Premier of Canada (1865)
• Victor Ruffy, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1869)
• José Balta, President of Peru (1872)
• Benito Juárez, President of Mexico (1872)
• Adolfo Ballivián, President of Bolivia (1874)
• Konstantinos Kanaris, Prime Minister of Greece (1877)
• Johann Jakob Scherer, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1878)
• Tomás Guardia Gutiérrez, President of Costa Rica (1882)
• Francisco Javier Zaldúa, President of Colombia (1882)
• Próspero Fernández Oreamuno, President of Costa Rica (1885)
• Agostino Depretis, President of the Council of Ministers of Italy (1887)
• Wilhelm Hertenstein, President of the Swiss Confederation (1888)
• Sir John A. Macdonald, Prime Minister of Canada (1891)
• John Ballance, Premier of New Zealand (1893)
• Louis Ruchonnet, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1893)
• Remigio Morales Bermúdez, President of Peru (1894)
• Sir John Sparrow David Thompson, Prime Minister of Canada (1894)
• Karl Schenk, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1895)
• Joseph James Cheeseman, President of Liberia (1896)
• Florvil Hyppolite, President of Haiti (1896)
• Félix Faure, President of France (1899)

1900-1949

• Federico Errázuriz Echaurren, President of Chile (1901)
• Walter Hauser, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1902)
• Manuel Candamo, President of Peru (1904)
• Theodoros Deligiannis, Prime Minister of Greece (1905)
• Richard John Seddon, Prime Minister of New Zealand (1906)
• Jules de Trooz, Cabinet Chief of Belgium (1907)
• Afonso Augusto Moreira Pena, President of Brazil (1909)
• Pedro Montt, President of Chile (1910)
• Emilio Estrada, President of Ecuador (1911)
• Ernst Brenner, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1911)
• Cincinnatus Leconte, President of Haiti (1912)
• Adolf Deucher, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1912)
• Tancrède Auguste, President of Haiti (1913)
• Roque Sáenz Peña, President of Argentina (1914)
• Paul Eyschen, Prime Minister of Luxembourg (1915)
• Yuan Shikai, President of the Republic of China (1916)
• Manuel Franco, President of Paraguay (1919)
• Eduard Müller, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1919)
• Yakov Sverdlov, Chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee (1919)
• Arthur Griffith, President of the Dáil of Ireland (1922)
• Gabriel Narutowicz, President of Poland (1922)
• Warren G. Harding, President of the United States (1923)
• Tomosaburo Kato, Prime Minister of Japan (1923)
• Vladimir Lenin, Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union (1924)
• Friedrich Ebert, President of Germany (1925)
• William Ferguson Massey, Prime Minister of New Zealand (1925)
• Sun Yat-sen, Generalissimo of the National Government of the Republic of China (1925)
• Jón Magnússon, Prime Minister of Iceland (1926)
• Takaaki Kato, Prime Minister of Japan (1926)
• Jānis Čakste, President of Latvia (1927)
• Paul von Hindenburg, President of Germany (1934)
• Juan Vicente Gómez, President of Venezuela (1935)
• Konstantinos Demertzis, Prime Minister of Greece (1936)
• Gyula Gömbös, Prime Minister of Hungary (1936)
• Kemal Atatürk, President of Turkey (1938)
• Joseph Aloysius Lyons, Prime Minister of Australia (1939)
• Aurelio Mosquera Narváez, President of Ecuador (1939)
• Giuseppe Motta, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1940)
• Jacinto Bienvenido Peynado, President of the Dominican Republic (1940)
• Michael Joseph Savage, Prime Minister of New Zealand (1940)
• Pedro Aguirre Cerda, President of Chile (1941)
• Ioannis Metaxas, Prime Minister of Greece (1941)
• Thorvald Stauning, Prime Minister of Denmark (1942)
• Lin Sen, Chairman of the National Government of the Republic of China (1943)
• Manuel L. Quezon, President of the Philippines (1944)
• Wang Jingwei, Chairman of the National Government of China at Nanjing (1944)
• John Curtin, Prime Minister of Australia (1945)
• Franklin D. Roosevelt, President of the United States (1945)
• Per Albin Hansson, Prime Minister of Sweden (1946)
• Juan Antonio Ríos Morales, President of Chile (1946)
• Manuel Roxas, President of the Philippines (1948)
• Georgi Dimitrov, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Bulgaria (1949)
• Themistoklis Sophoulis, Prime Minister of Greece (1949)

1950-1999

• Enrico Mizzi, Prime Minister of Malta (1950)
• Karl Renner, President of Austria (1950)
• António Óscar de Fragoso Carmona, President of Portugal (1951)
• Khorloogiin Choibalsan, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Mongolia (1952)
• Sveinn Björnsson, President of Iceland (1952)
• Chaim Weizmann, President of Israel (1952)
• Pierre Dupong, Prime Minister of Luxembourg (1953)
• Klement Gottwald, President of Czechoslovakia (1953)
• Joseph Stalin, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the Soviet Union (1953)
• Hans Hedtoft, Prime Minister of Denmark (1955)
• Alexandros Papagos, Prime Minister of Greece (1955)
• Bolesław Bierut, Prime Minister of the People's Republic of Poland (1956)
• Theodor Körner, President of Austria (1957)
• Antonín Zápotocký, President of Czechoslovakia (1957)
• Daniel Ouezzin Coulibaly, President of the Government Council of Upper Volta (1958)
• Georgi Purvanov Damyanov, Chairman of the Presidium of the National Assembly of Bulgaria (1958)
• Johannes G. Strijdom, Prime Minister of South Africa (1958)
• Hans Christian Hansen, Prime Minister of Denmark (1960)
• Wilhelm Pieck, President of East Germany (1960)
• Yitzhak Ben-Zvi, President of Israel (1963)
• Sarit Thanarat, Prime Minister of Thailand (1963)
• Dimitur Ganev, Chairman of the Presidium of the National Assembly of Bulgaria (1964)
• Otto Grotewohl, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of East Germany (1964)
• Sir Milton Margai, Prime Minister of Sierra Leone (1964)
• Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India (1964)
• Aleksander Zawadzki, Chairman of the Council of State of Poland (1964)
• Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, President of the State Council of Romania (1965)
• Adolf Schärf, President of Austria (1965)
• Lal Bahadur Shastri, Prime Minister of India (1966)
• Óscar Diego Gestido, President of Uruguay (1967)
• Léon M'ba, President of Gabon (1967)
• Sir Donald Burns Sangster, Prime Minister of Jamaica (1967)
• Levi Eshkol, Prime Minister of Israel (1969)
• Ho Chi Minh, President of North Vietnam (1969)
• Zakir Husain, President of India (1969)
• Bjarni Benediktsson, Prime Minister of Iceland (1970)
• Said Mohamed Cheikh, President of the Government Council of Comoros (1970)
• Yusuf bin Ishak, President of Singapore (1970)
• Gamal Abdel Nasser, President of Egypt (1970)
• François Duvalier, President of Haiti (1971)
• William V.S. Tubman, President of Liberia (1971)
• Erskine H. Childers, President of Ireland (1974)
• Franz Jonas, President of Austria (1974)
• Norman Eric Kirk, Prime Minister of New Zealand (1974)
• Juan Perón, President of Argentina (1974)
• Georges Pompidou, President of France (1974)
• Sir Ira Marcus Simmons, Governor of Saint Lucia (1974)
• Chiang Kai-shek, President of the Republic of China (1975)
• Francisco Franco, Head of State of Spain (1975)
• Tun Abdul Razak, Prime Minister of Malaysia (1976)
• Zhou Enlai, Premier of the People's Republic of China (1976)
• Mao Zedong, President of the People's Republic of China (1976)
• Zhu De, Chairman of the Permanent Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China (1976)
• Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed, President of India (1977)
• Makarios III, President of Cyprus (1977)
• Houari Boumedienne, President of Algeria (1978)
• Robert Llewellyn Bradshaw, Premier of Saint Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla (1978)
• Nicolaas Johannes Diederichs, State President of South Africa (1978)
• Jomo Kenyatta, President of Kenya (1978)
• Agostinho Neto, President of Angola (1979)
• Paul Southwell, Premier of Saint Christopher-Nevis-Anguilla (1979)
• Sir Seretse Khama, President of Botswana (1980)
• Masayoshi Ohira, Prime Minister of Japan (1980)
• Josip Broz Tito, President of Yugoslavia (1980)
• Francisco Sá Carneiro, Prime Minister of Portugal (1980)
• Benjamin Henry Sheares, President of Singapore (1981)
• Eric Williams, Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago (1981)
• Mohammad-Ali Rajai, President of Iran (1981)
• Mohammad-Javad Bahonar, Prime Minister of Iran (1981)
• Leonid Brezhnev, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (1982)
• Willi Ritschard, member of the Swiss Federal Council (1983)
• Yuri Andropov, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (1984)
• Chan Sy, Chairman of the Council of Ministers of Kampuchea (1984)
• Ahmad Fuad Mohieddin, Prime Minister of Egypt (1984)
• Ahmed Sékou Touré, President of Guinea (1984)
• Tom Adams, Prime Minister of Barbados (1985)
• Forbes Burnham, President of Guyana (1985)
• Konstantin Chernenko, Chairman of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union (1985)
• Tancredo Neves, President-elect of Brazil (1985)
• Sir Edward Youde, Governor of Hong Kong (1986)
• Errol Barrow, Prime Minister of Barbados (1987)
• Seyni Kountché, President of the Supreme Military Council of Niger (1987)
• Chiang Ching-kuo, President of the Republic of China (1988)
• Herbert A. Blaize, Prime Minister of Grenada (1989)
• Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Supreme Leader of Iran (1989)
• Kaysone Phomvihane, President of Laos (1992)
• Sir Robert Rex, Prime Minister of Niue (1992)
• József Antall, Prime Minister of Hungary (1993)
• Ratu Sir Penaia Ganilau, President of Fiji (1993)
• Félix Houphouët-Boigny, President of Côte d'Ivoire (1993)
• Turgut Özal, President of Turkey (1993)
• Kim Il-sung, President of North Korea (1994)
• Amata Kabua, President of the Marshall Islands (1996)
• Cheddi Jagan, President of Guyana (1997)
• Sani Abacha, Chairman of the Provisional Ruling Council of Nigeria (1998)
• Mohamed Taki Abdoulkarim, President of Comoros (1998)
• Jumabek Ibraimov, Prime Minister of Kyrgyzstan (1999)
• Franjo Tuđman, President of Croatia (1999)

2000 - present

• Hafez al-Assad, President of Syria (2000)
• Rosie Douglas, Prime Minister of Dominica (2000)
• Ionatana Ionatana, Prime Minister of Tuvalu (2000)
• Sultan Salahuddin Abdul Aziz Shah, King of Malaysia (2001)
• Muhammad Haji Ibrahim Egal, President of Somaliland (state without international recognition) (2002)
• Bernard Dowiyogo, President of Nauru (2003)
• Yasser Arafat, President of the Palestinian Authority (2004)
• Pierre Charles, Prime Minister of Dominica (2004)
• Thomas Klestil, President of Austria (2004)
• Gnassingbé Eyadéma, President of Togo (2005)
• Saparmurat Niyazov, President of Turkmenistan (2006)
• Pascal Yoadimnadji, Prime Minister of Chad (2007)
• Andranik Markaryan, Prime Minister of Armenia (2007)
• Sir John Compton, Prime Minister of Saint Lucia (2007)
• Soe Win, Prime Minister of Burma (2007)
• Levy Mwanawasa, President of Zambia (2008)
• Lansana Conté, President of Guinea (2008)
• Omar Bongo Ondimba, President of Gabon (2009)
• Lech Kaczyński, President of Poland (2010)
• Umaru Musa Yar'Adua, President of Nigeria (2010)
• David Thompson, Prime Minister of Barbados (2010)
• Sergey Bagapsh, President of Abkhazia (state without wide international recognition) (2011)
• Kim Jong-Il, Supreme Leader of North Korea (2011)
• Malam Bacai Sanhá, President of Guinea (2012)

See also

• List of Presidents of the United States who died in office
• List of Russian governors who died in office