We determine the θ dependence of the deconfinement temperature of SU(3) pure gauge theory, finding that it decreases in presence of a topological θ term. We do that by performing lattice simulations at imaginary θ, then exploiting analytic continuation. We also give an estimate of such dependence in the limit of a large number of colors N , and compare it with our numerical results.PACS numbers: 12.38. Aw, 11.15.Ha,12.38.Gc The possible effects of a CP violating term in Quantum ChromoDynamics (QCD) have been studied since long. Such term enters the Euclidean lagrangian as follows:where q(x) is the topological charge density. Experimental upper bounds on θ are quite stringent (|θ| 10 −10 ), suggesting that such term may be forbidden by some mechanism. Nevertheless, the dependence of QCD and of SU (N ) gauge theories on θ is of great theoretical and phenomenological interest. θ derivatives of the vacuum free energy, computed at θ = 0, enter various aspects of hadron phenomenology; an example is the topological susceptibility χ ≡ Q 2 /V (Q ≡ d 4 x q(x) and V is the space-time volume) which enters the solution of the so-called U (1) A problem [1,2]. Moreover it has been proposed [3] that topological charge fluctuations may play an important role at finite temperature T , especially around the deconfinement transition, where local effective variations of θ may be detectable as event by event P and CP violations in heavy ion collisions.In the present work we study the effect of a non-zero θ on the critical deconfining temperature T c , considering the case of pure Yang-Mills theories. Due to the symmetry under CP at θ = 0, the critical temperature T c (θ) is expected, similarly to the free energy, to be an even function of θ. Therefore we parameterize T c (θ) as followsIn the following we shall determine R θ for the SU (3) pure gauge theory, obtaining R θ > 0, and compare it with a simple model computation valid in the large N limit, showing that R θ is expected to be O(1/N 2 ).The method -Effects related to the topological θ term are typically of non-perturbative nature, hence numerical simulations on a lattice represent the ideal tool to explore them. However, it is well known that the Euclidean path integral representation of the partition functionis not suitable for Monte-Carlo simulations because the measure is complex when θ = 0. S QCD = d 4 x L QCD and periodic boundary conditions are assumed over the compactified time dimension of extension 1/T ; f (θ) is the free energy density and V s is the spatial volume.A similar sign problem is met for QCD at finite baryon chemical potential µ B , where the fermion determinant becomes complex. In that case, a possible partial solution is to study the theory at imaginary µ B , where the sign problem disappears, and then make use of analytic continuation to infer the dependence at real µ B , at least for small values of µ B /T [4]. An analogous approach has been proposed for exploring a non-zero θ [5-8]; as for µ B = 0, also in this case one assumes that the theory is a...