© Springer International Publishing Switzerland 2015.Controlling the wake vortex dynamics of bluff bodies efficiently is a fundamental problem in many applications. Earlier direct numerical simulations (Darekar and Sherwin) of three-dimensional bluff bodies demonstrated that the introduction of a spanwise waviness at both the leading and trailing surfaces suppresses the vortex shedding and reduces the amplitude of the fluctuating aerodynamic forces. Under this motivation, starting from a fully developed shedding, a sufficiently high spanwise forcing is introduced on the surface of the cylinder, in the regions where separation effects occur, resulting in the stabilisation of the near wake in a timeindependent state, similar to the effect of a sinusoidal stagnation surface. Stability analysis of the linearised Navier-Stokes equations was then performed on the threedimensional flows to investigate the role of the spanwise modulation on the absolute instability associated with the von Kármán street.