First off, there's more than one way to do this.

1. Pass an instance of DivergingNorm as the norm kwarg.
2. Use the colors kwarg to contourf and manually specify the colors
3. Use a discrete colormap constructed with matplotlib.colors.from_levels_and_colors.

The simplest way is the first option. It is also the only option that allows you to use a continuous colormap.

The reason to use the first or third options is that they will work for any type of matplotlib plot that uses a colormap (e.g. imshow, scatter, etc).

The third option constructs a discrete colormap and normalization object from specific colors. It's basically identical to the second option, but it will a) work with other types of plots than contour plots, and b) avoids having to manually specify the number of contours.

As an example of the first option (I'll use imshow here because it makes more sense than contourf for random data, but contourf would have identical usage other than the interpolation option.):

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.colors import DivergingNorm

data = np.random.random((10,10))
data = 10 * (data - 0.8)

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
im = ax.imshow(data, norm=DivergingNorm(0), cmap=plt.cm.seismic, interpolation='none')
fig.colorbar(im)
plt.show()

As an example of the third option (notice that this gives a discrete colormap instead of a continuous colormap):

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from matplotlib.colors import from_levels_and_colors

data = np.random.random((10,10))
data = 10 * (data - 0.8)

num_levels = 20
vmin, vmax = data.min(), data.max()
midpoint = 0
levels = np.linspace(vmin, vmax, num_levels)
midp = np.mean(np.c_[levels[:-1], levels[1:]], axis=1)
vals = np.interp(midp, [vmin, midpoint, vmax], [0, 0.5, 1])
colors = plt.cm.seismic(vals)
cmap, norm = from_levels_and_colors(levels, colors)

fig, ax = plt.subplots()
im = ax.imshow(data, cmap=cmap, norm=norm, interpolation='none')
fig.colorbar(im)
plt.show()

Based on the non-linear colormap used in this example, but with linear levels replaces by a shift,

import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
from matplotlib.colors import LinearSegmentedColormap

class roll_cmap(LinearSegmentedColormap):

    def __init__(self, cmap, shift):

        assert 0. < shift < 1.
        self.cmap = cmap
        self.N = cmap.N
        self.monochrome = self.cmap.monochrome
        self._x = np.linspace(0.0, 1.0, 255)
        self._y = np.roll(np.linspace(0.0, 1.0, 255),int(255.*shift))

    def __call__(self, xi, alpha=1.0, **kw):
        yi = np.interp(xi, self._x, self._y)
        return self.cmap(yi, alpha)


if __name__ == '__main__':

    y, x = np.mgrid[0.0:3.0:100j, 0.0:5.0:100j]
    H = np.sin(8*x/np.pi)

    cmap = plt.cm.hsv
    cmap_rolled = roll_cmap(cmap, shift=0.8)

    plt.subplot(2,1,1)
    plt.contourf(x, y, H, cmap=cmap)
    plt.colorbar()
    plt.subplot(2,1,2)
    plt.contourf(x, y, H, cmap=cmap_rolled)
    plt.colorbar()

    plt.show()

which results in the following output,

You can also use plt.set_cmap, see here or (more elaborately, scroll down) here:

import numpy as np
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

plt.imshow(np.random.random((10,10)), cmap='magma')
plt.colorbar()
plt.set_cmap('viridis')

I know this is late to the game, but I just went through this process and came up with a solution that perhaps less robust than subclassing normalize, but much simpler. I thought it'd be good to share it here for posterity.

The function

import numpy as np
import matplotlib
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
from mpl_toolkits.axes_grid1 import AxesGrid

def shiftedColorMap(cmap, start=0, midpoint=0.5, stop=1.0, name='shiftedcmap'):
    '''
    Function to offset the "center" of a colormap. Useful for
    data with a negative min and positive max and you want the
    middle of the colormap's dynamic range to be at zero.

    Input
    -----
      cmap : The matplotlib colormap to be altered
      start : Offset from lowest point in the colormap's range.
          Defaults to 0.0 (no lower offset). Should be between
          0.0 and `midpoint`.
      midpoint : The new center of the colormap. Defaults to 
          0.5 (no shift). Should be between 0.0 and 1.0. In
          general, this should be  1 - vmax / (vmax + abs(vmin))
          For example if your data range from -15.0 to +5.0 and
          you want the center of the colormap at 0.0, `midpoint`
          should be set to  1 - 5/(5 + 15)) or 0.75
      stop : Offset from highest point in the colormap's range.
          Defaults to 1.0 (no upper offset). Should be between
          `midpoint` and 1.0.
    '''
    cdict = {
        'red': [],
        'green': [],
        'blue': [],
        'alpha': []
    }

    # regular index to compute the colors
    reg_index = np.linspace(start, stop, 257)

    # shifted index to match the data
    shift_index = np.hstack([
        np.linspace(0.0, midpoint, 128, endpoint=False), 
        np.linspace(midpoint, 1.0, 129, endpoint=True)
    ])

    for ri, si in zip(reg_index, shift_index):
        r, g, b, a = cmap(ri)

        cdict['red'].append((si, r, r))
        cdict['green'].append((si, g, g))
        cdict['blue'].append((si, b, b))
        cdict['alpha'].append((si, a, a))

    newcmap = matplotlib.colors.LinearSegmentedColormap(name, cdict)
    plt.register_cmap(cmap=newcmap)

    return newcmap

An example

biased_data = np.random.random_integers(low=-15, high=5, size=(37,37))

orig_cmap = matplotlib.cm.coolwarm
shifted_cmap = shiftedColorMap(orig_cmap, midpoint=0.75, name='shifted')
shrunk_cmap = shiftedColorMap(orig_cmap, start=0.15, midpoint=0.75, stop=0.85, name='shrunk')

fig = plt.figure(figsize=(6,6))
grid = AxesGrid(fig, 111, nrows_ncols=(2, 2), axes_pad=0.5,
                label_mode="1", share_all=True,
                cbar_location="right", cbar_mode="each",
                cbar_size="7%", cbar_pad="2%")

# normal cmap
im0 = grid[0].imshow(biased_data, interpolation="none", cmap=orig_cmap)
grid.cbar_axes[0].colorbar(im0)
grid[0].set_title('Default behavior (hard to see bias)', fontsize=8)

im1 = grid[1].imshow(biased_data, interpolation="none", cmap=orig_cmap, vmax=15, vmin=-15)
grid.cbar_axes[1].colorbar(im1)
grid[1].set_title('Centered zero manually,\nbut lost upper end of dynamic range', fontsize=8)

im2 = grid[2].imshow(biased_data, interpolation="none", cmap=shifted_cmap)
grid.cbar_axes[2].colorbar(im2)
grid[2].set_title('Recentered cmap with function', fontsize=8)

im3 = grid[3].imshow(biased_data, interpolation="none", cmap=shrunk_cmap)
grid.cbar_axes[3].colorbar(im3)
grid[3].set_title('Recentered cmap with function\nand shrunk range', fontsize=8)

for ax in grid:
    ax.set_yticks([])
    ax.set_xticks([])

Results of the example: