A ®nite element, large displacement formulation of static elastic±plastic analysis of slender arbitrarily curved planar beams is presented. Non-conservative and dynamic loads are at present not included. The Bernoulli hypothesis of plane cross-sections is assumed and the eect of shear strains is neglected. Exact non-linear kinematic equations of curved beams, derived by Reissner are incorporated into a generalized principle of virtual work through Lagrangian multipliers. The only function that has to be interpolated in the ®nite element implementation is the rotation of the centroid axis of a beam. This is an important advantage over other classical displacement approaches since the ®eld consistency problem and related locking phenomena do not arise. Numerical examples, comprising elastic and elastic±plastic, curved and straight beams, at large displacements and rotations, show very nice computational and accuracy characteristics of the present family of ®nite elements. The comparisons with other published results very clearly show the superior performance of the present elements.