Cobra helicopter or similar, covered up outside Excel London

Defence & Security Equipment International

DSEI is one of the world's largest arms fairs. It takes place in London every two years and is due to return in September 2021. It will include all of the biggest arms companies, displaying weapons from sniper rifles and tanks, to combat aircraft and warships.

Last updated: 28/07/2020

DSEI is one of the world’s largest arms fairs. It takes place in London’s Docklands every two years. It is due to return on 14- 17 September 2021.

DSEI 2021 will feature over 1,600 exhibitors, including all of the biggest arms companies. Weapons on display will range from sniper rifles and tanks, to combat aircraft and warships.

They will be marketing their wares to more than 30,000 attendees. The organisers will also invite official military and security delegations from around the world including many that represent human rights abusing regimes and countries involved in conflict.

The arms fair is organised by Clarion Events and the government’s arms sales unit, Defence & Security Exports, a civil service body that exists solely to promote arms sales. Government support is crucial to the success of DSEI and its continued existence.

DSEI takes place behind heavily protected security fences and police lines – designed to allow arms dealers to trade their wares unhindered by transparency or public protest.

This is where those who profit from war, repression and injustice do business.

And this is where we can stop them.

Stop DSEI

Last time the arms fair came to London, hundreds of people took part in action to disrupt its set-up

Watch the films

2019 action highlights

Stop the Arm Fair Week of Action Day 7: Borders & Migration

At the arms fair, arms companies don't just promote weapons of war that fuel conflict and oppression, they also show off the latest in technology that governments can use to toughen up their borders when people are forced to flee - warships to patrol the seas, surveillance equipment and security fencing.

Protesters wearing yellow work helmets carrying signs saying "We are not rioters"

Stop the Arms Fair Week of Action Day 6: Festival of Resistance

The Festival of Resistance brought local and global activists together to #StopDSEI. We were honoured to hear from activists from all over the world, including Brazil, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Hong Kong and Sudan, on the importance of international solidarity.

Stop the Arms Fair Week of Action Day 5: Climate Justice

The struggle for climate justice and the struggle to end the arms trade are closely intertwined. When fossil fuel resources are extracted, land captured, and communities displaced by governments and fossil fuel companies, it is arms that make it possible.

From the blog

Organising to Stop DSEI: It Starts Here

Our fight to stop the DSEI arms fair is inextricably linked with other intersecting struggles for justice – struggles that It Starts Here called to put front and centre of our action in 2019.

The arms trade is global. So is our resistance.

In the UK, South Korea and New Zealand, activists have been taking action against the global arms trade. After the marathon of activism against the DSEI arms fair in September, we were off to Seoul, South Korea: to take action against the ADEX arms fair.

activists raise their fists behind a stop the arms fair banner

“It is up to each of us to stop the killing where it starts”: No retrial for Stop DSEI activists

In 2015, a group of eight activists were arrested while taking action against the DSEI arms fair, and later acquitted as a judge ruled they took action to prevent a greater crime.