Renaming branches remotely in Git

You just have to create a new local branch with the desired name, push it to your remote, and then delete the old remote branch:

$ git branch new-branch-name origin/old-branch-name
$ git push origin --set-upstream new-branch-name
$ git push origin :old-branch-name

Then, to see the old branch name, each client of the repository would have to do:

$ git fetch origin
$ git remote prune origin

NOTE: If your old branch is your main branch, you should change your main branch settings. Otherwise, when you run $ git push origin :old-branch-name, you'll get the error "deletion of the current branch prohibited".

If you really just want to rename branches remotely, without renaming any local branches at the same time, you can do this with a single command:

git push <remote> <remote>/<old_name>:refs/heads/<new_name> :<old_name>

I wrote this script (git-rename-remote-branch) which provides a handy shortcut to do the above easily.

As a bash function:

git-rename-remote-branch(){
  if [ $# -ne 3 ]; then
    echo "Rationale : Rename a branch on the server without checking it out."
    echo "Usage     : ${FUNCNAME[0]} <remote> <old name> <new name>"
    echo "Example   : ${FUNCNAME[0]} origin master release"
    return 1 
  fi

  git push $1 $1/$2\:refs/heads/$3 :$2
}

To integrate @ksrb's comment: What this basically does is two pushes in a single command, first git push <remote> <remote>/<old_name>:refs/heads/<new_name> to push a new remote branch based on the old remote tracking branch and then git push <remote> :<old_name> to delete the old remote branch.

First checkout to the branch which you want to rename:

git branch -m old_branch new_branch
git push -u origin new_branch

To remove an old branch from remote:

git push origin :old_branch