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Overweight and obesity are serious, large‐scale, global, public health concerns requiring population‐based childhood overweight and obesity prevention. The overall objective of this review is to identify aspects of successful childhood overweight prevention programmes. This objective will be met by assessing existing interventions quantitatively as well as qualitatively, identifying efficacy, effectiveness and implementation, and evaluating potential adverse effects of previous studies. This review was limited to school‐based studies with a quantitative evaluation using anthropometric outcomes and that intervene on diet or activity‐related behaviours. Quantitative and qualitative approaches are used to identify factors related to successful interventions as well as adverse consequences. Sixty‐eight per cent of the interventions, or 17 of the 25, were ‘effective’ based on a statistically significant reduction in body mass …