The impulsive control method is developed to stabilize a class of Cohen–Grossberg neural networks (CGNNs) with reaction–diffusion terms and Dirichlet boundary conditions. With the help of Lyapunov functionals, impulsive delay differential inequality and comparison principle, some sufficient conditions ensuring global exponential stability (GES) of equilibrium point are obtained. In particular, the estimate of the exponential convergence rate is also provided, which depends on system parameters, time delays and impulsive interval. Numerical simulations are presented finally to demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed results.