In the present work, the theory of linear stability analysis has been extended to investigate the hydrodynamic stability of three-phase sparged reactors (slurry bubble columns and three-phase fluidization). A mathematical model has been developed for the prediction of regime transition over a wide range of bubble size (0.7-20 脳 10鈭? m) and terminal rise velocity (80-340 脳 10鈭? m/s), particle settling velocity (1-1000 脳 10鈭? m/s), particle concentration (0.0007-30 vol%) and slurry density (800-5000 kg/m3). It was observed that the developed model predicts the transition gas holdup within an absolute deviation of 12% for three-phase sparged reactors. It was also observed that the developed generalized stability criterion predicts the regime transition in two-phase systems satisfactorily when applied to bubble columns.