This paper presents a detailed buckling study on FRP strengthening of metallic cylindrical shells with different geometric imperfections and centrally located unstiffened and stiffened cut-outs. Initially, bare and FRP strengthened aluminium cylindrical shells have been manufactured. Geometric imperfections have been measured and implemented in the numerical model. Interfacial bond quality has been assessed by two different non-destructive techniques. The buckling response of bare and FRP strengthened shells have been numerically simulated and validated with respective experiments. Subsequently, the difference in buckling response between FRP strengthened and bare aluminium shells with variations in cut-out's size, orientation, shape, and corner radius has been analysed for unstiffened cut-outs. The effect of increase in stiffener's thickness and overlap width for photo-frame type stiffening of rectangular cut-outs with and without closure has been investigated. The study has revealed interesting observations. (1) Effect of cut-out size on buckling capacity of the shell is a function of its imperfection magnitude. For shells with large initial imperfections, introducing a cut-out as well as with increase in its size, relatively smaller drop in buckling capacity is found; while shells with small initial imperfections resulted in a steep and large drop in buckling load even with a small cut-out size. (2) FRP strengthening is more effective for shells with cut-outs compared to shells without cut-outs, as it increases the flexural stiffness of shell against asymmetric buckles’ initiation and resists outward lip opening along longitudinal edge of cut-out. (3) For shells with large initial imperfections, elliptical cut-outs offer higher buckling resistance than rectangular cut-outs with varying corner radius but with FRP wrapping, rectangular cut-outs with rounded edges exhibit the best buckling performance. (4) In the case of shells with stiffened cut-out, both with or without closure, FRP strengthening is effective only for shells with smaller initial imperfections. Further findings and observations are discussed and concluded. © 2022 Elsevier Ltd