Data Export Tool

Coverage and Update Schedule

Available Data

Date last updated

Africa

 22 November

Middle East

 22 November

Latin America & the Caribbean

 22 November

Europe & Central Asia

 22 November

Asia Pacific

 22 November

United States & Canada

 22 November

All data are updated at the start of every week, through the most recent Friday. Data for Africa, the Middle East, and Latin America & the Caribbean are updated on Mondays, and data for the Asia-Pacific, Europe & Central Asia, and the United States & Canada are updated on Tuesdays. Please note that years of historical coverage vary across countries and regions. A full list of country and time period coverage is available here.

Export Instructions

To export data, please create a free account through the ACLED Access Portal and generate a unique access key. Enter your key and email below to access the dataset. Before downloading data, please review our Terms of Use & Attribution Policy. For more information, check the user guide and the FAQs or contact us at [email protected].

Consult our API Guide for more information on how to access the data.

Usage Restriction

Public Sector Civil Society Corporate
  • Six downloads per year in total (from date of registration)
  • Access to real-time data
  • Access to three years of historical data (where available, from date of download)
  • Unlimited downloads
  • Access to real-time data and historical data
  • Access to API available upon request
  • Three downloads per year in total (from date of registration)
  • Access to real-time data
  • Access to one year of historical data (from date of download)

Please reach out to Data Access Team through our contact form for technical support and questions.

Technical Notices

  • Due to the size of the file, users may encounter technical difficulties when attempting to download the entire dataset. If you would like to download the full dataset, please contact [email protected] for assistance. 
  • When working with the full dataset, do not open the file with Microsoft Excel, as it contains more rows than the Excel limit. To open the data in Excel, please apply filters to reduce the number of rows in the file before downloading.
  • Exported data will contain a timestamp column that indicates when the data were last updated. Please find a methodology note explaining ACLED timestamps here.
  • If you are a LastPass user and the data export tool is not loading properly, enter your LastPass vault and, under advanced options, disable “use improved save and fill.”
  • To include data on conflict exposure select the ‘Population’ box.

More Information

Due to the size of the full dataset (see Technical Notices below for more information), users are advised to download data for specific time periods and/or geographic areas.

To download all available ACLED data for a specific time period, enter your login information, select a date range in the ‘from’ and ‘to’ boxes, and click ‘export.’ To download all available ACLED data for a specific region, country, or location enter your login information, select a ‘region,’ ‘country,’ or ‘location’ from the relevant drop-down menus, and click ‘export.’ Note: ‘country’ selection will override ‘region’ selection, and only data for the selected country or countries will be downloaded. ‘Location’ selection requires a ‘country’ selection, and will result in an export of only data for that specific subnational location.

To download data for specific event types, select the relevant event types from that category in the ‘event type’ or ‘sub-event type’ boxes and leave all other categories as they are. All data for the selected event type(s) will be exported.

To download data for a specific actor type or a specific actor, select the ‘actor type’ or ‘actor’ in the relevant boxes and leave all other categories as they are. All data for the selected actor or actor type(s) or actor will be exported.

By default, the data are exported in a format where each row represents a single event, on a specific day and location, and involving distinct actors. An ‘actor based’ file displays events by single actors instead, meaning that events are often repeated if two actors are involved. To determine which of the two file types to use, you should consider whether the data are being used to analyze patterns over time, types of violence, conflict between groups, or locations (which the default file type is best for), or to analyze actor types or specific actors. For the former, the default format should be used, while for the latter, the ‘actor based’ file should be used. 

For systems that use semi-colon separated values by default, you may wish to use the ‘compatibility mode’ option.

Data Export Tool

Guides and Methodology

Please consult the ACLED Codebook and User Guide when working with the data. Further guides and methodology documents – including briefs explaining our sourcing and fatality methodologies, as well as specific coding decisions for different countries and conflict contexts – can be found in the ACLED Resource Library.

Deleted Events

Events are occasionally removed from the ACLED dataset if new information comes to light to disqualify them from inclusion or if an event is merged with another event. The latter is done to avoid duplicate events. Per ACLED methodology, violent events involving the same actors occurring on the same day in the same location are aggregated into a single event; the same is done for demonstrations occurring on the same day in the same location over the same issues (for more, see the ACLED Codebook). See the guide on how to use this file and keep your ACLED dataset updated.

Deleted Events

Download File