The UDR was the successor to Charles de Gaulle's earlier party, the Rally of the French People, and was organised in 1958, along with the founding of the Fifth Republic as the Union for the New Republic (UNR), and in 1962 merged with the Democratic Union of Labour, a left-wing Gaullist group.

After the May 1968 crisis, it formed a right-wing coalition named Union for the Defense of the Republic (UDR); it was subsequently renamed Union of Democrats for the Republic, retaining the abbreviation UDR, in October 1968.

Under de Gaulle's successor Georges Pompidou it promoted the Gaullist movement.

It dissolved in 1976, and its successor was the Rally for the Republic (RPR) founded by Jacques Chirac.

This article about a political party in France is a stub.