Met Police mounts huge operation for rival London marches and FA Cup final

London police mounted one of their largest recent public-order operations as rival marches, a major football final and the threat of violence converged on the same day.

About 4,000 officers were deployed across central London on Saturday for a policing plan that relied on horses, dogs, drones, helicopters, armoured vehicles and live facial recognition. The Metropolitan Police said the scale of the operation reflected a city facing one of its busiest days for policing in recent years, with officers preparing for serious disorder, hate crime and other criminality in a climate sharpened by the conflict in the Middle East and the UK’s severe terrorism threat level.

The main flashpoints were Tommy Robinson’s Unite the Kingdom rally and a pro-Palestinian march marking Nakba Day. Police estimated 50,000 people for the Robinson rally and 30,000 for the Nakba Day protest, which was organised by a coalition including the Palestine Solidarity Campaign and Stop the War and was also being joined by Stand Up To Racism. The Nakba Day march was set to begin in Exhibition Road in Kensington and end at Waterloo Place, passing along Brompton Road and Piccadilly.

The Metropolitan Police said the protest policing was being shaped by months of repeated mobilisation. Since October 2023, the Palestine Coalition had held more than 33 large protests, and officers had intervened to change the route of 21 of them. That pattern has turned route control into a core operational question: how to preserve protest rights while limiting the risk that large, emotionally charged crowds spill into confrontation, especially when rival demonstrations are taking place in the same city on the same day.

The operation also carried an explicit warning about the state’s tolerance for extremist messaging. For the first time under official protest restrictions, organisers and speakers could face prosecution if a rally was used as a platform for extremism or hate speech. Ahead of Robinson’s event, the government blocked 11 foreign nationals described by Sir Keir Starmer as far-right agitators from entering the UK. Starmer said the organisers were “peddling hatred and division”.

Police were also planning around the FA Cup final at Wembley, adding a third major demand on resources and a further risk that football fans could move from the stadium into protest areas. The Met said the operation would cost £4.5 million, including £1.7 million to bring in officers from other forces, underscoring the strain on policing capacity when public order, football and political mobilisation collide. Officers were also working from the memory of Robinson’s September 2025 Unite the Kingdom rally, when more than 110,000 people attended, violence broke out in multiple locations and officers were injured.