In recent years, externally bonded fibre reinforced polymer (FRP) material has efficiently been used in the rehabilitation of civil engineering infrastructure. This has particularly been employed in the case of the FRP strengthened metallic structure against static and fatigue loads. However, the understanding of the effect of impact load on strengthened structures is still in its early stages. Thus, this study is aimed at examining the effectiveness of the CFRP in strengthening full-scale steel columns against impact load. To achieve this aim, a numerical model built using non-linear finite element package ABAQUS was validated against experimental tests. In these analyses, failures of all investigated materials (steel, CFRP and adhesive material) were included in the numerical model. The focus of this study was to examine the ability of the CFRP strengthening technique in preventing the failure occurred in the axially loaded columns subjected to impact load. The CFRP strengthening technique was found to be excellently able to prevent column failure whether it was global buckling failure or transversely shear failure in addition to its ability in reducing axial and transverse displacement to more than 70% in many cases. The previous conclusions were drawn by examining many parameters such as boundary conditions, preloading level, kinetic energy, impact location, impact direction…etc.