<p>The present research presents potentials and complementary potentials used in the one-dimensional nonlocal integral formulations. The pure stress and the pure strain nonlocal formulations were considered. While the potential used in the strain driven formulation is well known, the complementary potential has not yet been presented in the literature. The same applies to the stress driven formulation. The equivalent formulations are obtained by resorting to the Legendre transformation, and their equivalence is proved. It is also shown that these results can be used to postulate a novel potential, i.e. a kind of mixed stress–strain potential, which is, however, as ill-conditioned as the pure strain-driven formulation. Finally, an example is given that practically confirms that the stress-driven formulations resulting from the potential and the complementary potential are equivalent.</p>