Data about arms and security trade fairs and the companies that exhibit at them.
A collaborative project between Campaign Against Arms Trade and Omega Research Foundation.
This data can be explored interactively at:
We include here events which feature an ‘exhibition’ or are attended by ‘exhibitors’, and which meet either of the following criteria:
Events that specifically invite or categorise exhibitors in the sectors of “defence”, “security”, “military”, “policing” or “hunting”.
Events attended by, or organised in collaboration with, state organisations that facilitate the export of controlled goods, for example the Export Control Joint Unit in the United Kingdom.
We aim to include complete exhibitor lists for the events described above. Not all companies in these listings are arms companies; some provide purely military products and services while others provide products and services intended primarily for the civilian market but which may have military applications. There are also some notable companies in military-adjacent but benevolent fields such as search and rescue or mine clearance.
In most cases, data is presented verbatim without an attempt to correct spelling errors or update company names that have been superceded by rebranding or acquisition. Logical errors, for example where a company's country has been listed as its name, and vice versa, have been corrected when encountered. Every effort has been made on our part to ensure that exhibitor lists represent the most up-to-date available data.
Our research has so far produced a list of approximately 1750 unique arms and security fairs that are known to have taken place. Of these, around 500 are included in this repository, and roughly 200 of these have complete exhibitor lists (see the Statistics sections below for more precise figures).
Thus, at this stage the dataset is far from complete and in general it would not be appropriate to use it for comparative analysis.
However, this project is ongoing and our intention is move gradually towards completion as our resources allow.
This project is a collaboration between Campaign Against Arms Trade and Omega Research Foundation.
Any enquiries may be directed to data@caat.org.uk.
Corrections may be submitted by email or as GitHub issues.
- 522 series
- 1821 events
- 204423 exhibitors
- 769 organisers
- 2783 delegations
Arms fair data in the /data directory of this repository is considered public domain and not subject to copyright restriction.
All other code, text and images included in this repository is provided by Campaign Against Arms Trade and Omega Research Foundation under a Creative Commons Attribution NonCommercial ShareAlike 4.0 International licence.
You are free to:
- Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format
- Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material
Under the following terms:
- Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
- NonCommercial — You may not use the material for commercial purposes.
- ShareAlike — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you must distribute your contributions under the same license as the original.