How to Push a New Branch to GitHub: Step-by-Step Guide

When working with Git and GitHub, creating and pushing branches is a routine — and powerful — part of modern development workflows. Whether you’re working on a new feature, fixing a bug, or collaborating with others, pushing a new branch allows you to keep your work organized and isolated from the main codebase.

In this blog, you’ll learn exactly how to push a new branch to GitHub using Git.

Table of Contents

🧱 Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure:

You have Git installed
You’ve cloned the repository locally
You’re authenticated with GitHub (via SSH or a personal access token)

✅ Step-by-Step: Push a New Branch to GitHub

1. Create a New Branch

In your terminal or Git Bash, navigate to your repository and run:

git checkout -b your-branch-name

This creates and switches to a new branch.

Example:

git checkout -b feature/login-form

2. Make Changes and Commit

Edit your code or add new files. Then, stage and commit the changes:

git add .
git commit -m "Add login form feature"

3. Push the New Branch to GitHub

Use the following command to push your new branch:

git push -u origin your-branch-name

Example:

git push -u origin feature/login-form

origin refers to the default remote GitHub repository.
-u sets the upstream so future git push or git pull commands default to this branch.

4. Verify on GitHub

Go to your GitHub repository in the browser. You’ll see a notification suggesting you to “Compare & pull request” for your newly pushed branch.

From here, you can:

Open a pull request
Review code
Merge it into the main branch after review

🧠 Pro Tips

Use clear and descriptive branch names, like bug/fix-auth, feature/signup, or hotfix/payment-error.
Always pull the latest changes from main before creating a new branch to avoid conflicts: git checkout main git pull origin main git checkout -b your-new-branch
You can check all local branches with git branch and all remote branches with git branch -r.

🏁 Conclusion

Pushing a new branch to GitHub is a fundamental skill for collaborative and versioned development. With just a few Git commands, you can safely isolate work, contribute features, and collaborate through pull requests — all without disrupting the main codebase.