This special issue of Disasters explores the increased interest and engagement by donor and national governments in ‘stabilising’ contexts affected by armed conflict and complex emergencies, and considers its implications for international humanitarian action. Stabilisation is broadly understood as those efforts that seek, through a range of military, humanitarian, political and economic instruments, to forge, secure or support a particular political order that is deemed to protect or enhance national or international stability. The diversity, evolution and wide geographical and historical scope of these agendas is captured in case studies on Afghanistan, Colombia, Haiti, Pakistan, Somalia, Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste, with an additional contribution analysing the historical antecedents of stabilisation, and an overarching editorial that captures key trends and issues affecting humanitarian action in this current era of stabilisation.