The axisymmetric stability of tokamak equilibria with arbitrary cross section is studied numerically using the energy principle. The contribution to &dgr;Wfrom the plasma region is minimized analytically with respect to displacements in the toroidal and poloidal directions. the formulation of Lu¨st and Martensen is used for the vacuum contribution. Bessel–Fourier and other sets of trial functions are then employed to cast the minimization of &dgr;Winto a matrix eigenvalue problem. A computer code namedaxisymevaluates these matrix elements and solves for the eigenvalues. The code is fully toroidal and compressible mode trial functions are included. Wall stabilization is studied by placing a conducting wall around the vacuum region.