Abstract. There is a well-established instability index theory for linear and quadratic matrix polynomials for which the coefficient matrices are Hermitian and skew-Hermitian. This theory relates the number of negative directions for the matrix coefficients which are Hermitian to the total number of unstable eigenvalues for the polynomial. Herein we extend the theory to -even matrix polynomials of any finite degree. In particular, unlike previously known cases we show that the instability index depends upon the size of the matrices when the degree of the polynomial is greater than two. We also consider Hermitian matrix polynomials, and derive an index which counts the number of eigenvalues with nonpositive imaginary part. The results are refined if we consider the Hermitian matrix polynomial to be a perturbation of a -even polynomials; however, this refinement requires additional assumptions on the matrix coefficients.