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The Triple Entente ("entente" — French for "agreement") was the name given to the loose alignment of Great Britain, France, and Russia after the signing of the Anglo-Russian Entente in 1907. The alignment of the three powers, supplemented by various agreements with Japan, the United States, and Spain, constituted a powerful counterweight to the Triple Alliance of Imperial Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy, the third having concluded an additional secret agreement with France effectively nullifying her Alliance commitments.

Russia had been a member of the League of the Three Emperors with Austria-Hungary and Germany. After the League's collapse during the Alexander von Battenberg affair, German Chancellor Bismarck tried to keep an alliance with Russia. This was formalized in the Reinsurance Treaty of 1887. But when Bismarck was dismissed from office in 1890, Kaiser Wilhelm II failed to renew the treaty and Russia formed a military alliance with France. The UK had been asked to join in an alliance with Germany, but did not agree with Germany's ideological and military goals, and by the early twentieth century was engaged in a naval arms race with Germany.

The entente only took on a more formal role after the outbreak of the Great War in 1914. With the addition of Italy in 1915, the Triple Entente was the force that opposed the Central Powers. After the outbreak of war in Europe in August 1914, the three Entente powers undertook on September 4 not to conclude a separate peace with Germany or Austria-Hungary. Russia's separate armistice (December 1917) and peace Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on March 3, 1918, however, ended its alignment with the other Entente powers. The UK and France continued to collaborate in ultimately unsuccessful attempts to uphold the postwar order during the 1920s and 1930s, until France's crushing June 1940 defeat in renewed conflict with Germany forced her into a separate armistice, leaving the UK alone in Europe.

The Entente heralded the end of British neutrality in Europe. It was partly a response to growing German antagonism expressed in the creation of the Kaiserliche Marine battle fleet capable of threatening British naval supremacy.

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