London. England has no parliament or government of its own, so it shares the United Kingdom's capital: the Westminster parliament legislates for England directly.
England is the only one of the four countries of the United Kingdom with no devolved legislature, and that is the whole of the answer.
Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have a legislature and a government of their own, each with a seat: Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast. England has neither. Laws that apply only to England are made at Westminster by the United Kingdom parliament, and English public services are run by United Kingdom departments.
So when people say London is the capital of England, they are right, but for a reason that is easy to miss: London is England's capital because Westminster is where England is governed from, and Westminster is in London.
Westminster has been the seat of English royal government since Edward the Confessor built his palace there in the eleventh century, and of the English parliament since the thirteenth. Winchester was the seat of the West Saxon kings before that and is sometimes called the old capital of England, which is a fair description of the ninth and tenth centuries and not of anything since.
There is no separate English capital waiting to be named, no English parliament building, and no English first minister. Proposals for an English parliament come up regularly and none has been enacted.
The places above come from GeoNames, reconciled against Wikidata. Last checked 21 September 2026. How we know · Suggest a correction