Campaigners disrupt event showcase demanding venues stop hosting fossil fuel firms

Amidst the third heat storm of this year, campaigners demanded an end to London venues hosting events for fossil fuel companies.

Fossil Free London campaigners disrupted inside the QEII Centre in Westminster while the venue hosted its annual Summer Showcase. This is an invitation-only event marketed to the events industry where companies can find suitable locations for their corporate events.

In protest over London venues hosting oil and gas events, five campaigners entered the 40th birthday party event at the QEII Centre and disrupted the event. They requested to give a birthday speech within the DJ booth when they said:

Did you know the QEII Centre is one of the biggest hosts of the fossil fuel companies in London? They line the pockets of the oil and gas industry. They have blood on their hands and their pockets are lined with oily money.

This is a climate crisis. people are dying. They host Shell, Exxon, as well as the weapons manufacturing companies. Their pockets are lined with oily money. Shame on them… Shame on you!

They were dragged out by security while chanting:

London’s calling, London’s burning! Don’t host oil!

The QEII Centre hosts a variety of fossil fuel events. In February 2026, it hosted International Energy Week, a three-day oil and gas conference organised by the Energy Institute and attended by companies including Shell, BP, Equinor and TotalEnergies.

London consistently brings together oil majors, national oil companies, commodity traders, financiers, consultancies, law firms, diplomats, regulators and policymakers at global conferences. These include Energy Intelligence Forum, World Energy Capital Assembly and Africa Energies Summit.

And the capital’s role in these conference circles is growing: the Middle East Petroleum & Gas Conference relocated from Dubai to London in June.

Campaign highlights fossil fuel – far right link

The protest comes as the start of a new campaign by the climate justice group, that demands London venues stop hosting ‘oil and hate’. The group intends to draw attention to the city’s enabling of the fossil fuel industry and the far right. And it will disrupt venues that host the fossil fuel industry event including when the venue is not currently hosting an oil or gas event.

In June, Kensington Olympia in London hosted the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship conference. This brought together climate deniers, far-right figures including Nigel Farage and Big Oil executives. Between 2019 and 2024, Reform UK received more than £2.3m from fossil fuel interests, polluters and climate deniers. That made up 92% of the party’s donations in that period.

The campaign emerges as a growing number of venues have already refused to host such events. In February 2025, the London venue OMEARA cancelled an unofficial afterparty for the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference following a Fossil Free London campaign.

In July 2026, the Powerscourt Hotel in County Wicklow, Ireland, cancelled a conference by Dialog, an invitation-only group co-founded by tech billionaire Peter Thiel, after a public campaign.

Robin Wells, director for Fossil Free London, said:

London is cooking and this is London calling, and we’re calling time on the venues that host oil and hate.

Every day in our city, Big Oil meets and colludes behind closed doors in air conditioned rooms, to cause fossil-fuelled heat storms like this one, the third of this year.

They meet in hidden conferences, private ballrooms and exclusive drinks receptions, plotting to set fire to our safety and security and collude with the politicians, thinktanks and far-right forces to strip back our rights.

Venues hand fossil fuel actors the space and the secrecy to burn our house down, while lining their own pockets. And the screams of those who live in that burning house are only getting louder right now.

From North London, where we personally know four people who died in a fire in the last heat storm, to China and Taiwan, as millions face a super typhoon tearing through their windows and tearing up their lives.

The people are sweating: in this fossil-fuelled extreme heat, and in fear of the avalanche of racism and climate denial currently being perpetuated inside our city’s private venues. It’s time for these city’s spaces need to make the moral choice. Venues have already kicked out far-right actors, proving it can be done.

This city belongs to all of us. We are resolving to make it impossible for destruction and violence on a mass scale to continue to thrive here in London. No room for oil. No room for hate.

Featured image via Fossil Free London