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, returning in September 2023. It includes most of the biggest arms companies, displaying weapons from sniper rifles and tanks, to combat aircraft and warships.

Last updated 6 June 2023

DSEI is one of the world’s largest arms fairs. It takes place in London’s Docklands every two years, and plans to return  on 12-15 September 2023.

Find out more about this year’s fair on CAAT’s DSEI 2023 data page.

DSEI 2021 featured over 1,600 exhibitors, including most of the biggest arms companies.  Weapons on display ranged from small arms and armoured vehicles, to combat aircraft and warships.

The companies marketed their wares to more than 30,000 attendees. These included 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.

Plans are being made around resistance to the set up of the fair (4-11 September 2023) and during the fair itself (12-15 September 2023). To find out more, and get involved: www.stopthearmsfair.org.uk

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

Activists with banner that reads 'free movement for everyone.'

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.

Activists block road outside DSEI

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.

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Activist poet Shareefa Energy opens It Starts Here.

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.

CAAT would not exist without its supporters. Each new supporter helps us strengthen our call for an end to the international arms trade.

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