Event-triggered sliding mode control for robust stabilization of linear systems is presented here. In event-triggered control strategy the control law is not updated in periodic manner but a specific condition is used to generate the possible triggering instant for the control update. It is seen that with the sliding mode control the sequence of triggering instants generated by event condition does not exhibit accumulation of triggering instants in the presence of disturbances. We propose the sufficient event condition for the sliding mode control that guarantees that in the finite time sliding mode occurs in the system in the vicinity of sliding surface and remains within a predesigned region. An analysis for event triggered stabilization of fractional order systems is briefly given. The same triggering condition developed for integer order systems also guarantees stability of fractional order systems. A numerical example is given to show the effectiveness of the above result. © Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.