arXiv:2610.24524v1 Announce Type: new Abstract: This paper develops skew-symmetric formulations and energy stable finite difference schemes for the reactive Euler and reactive Navier--Stokes equations. By introducing suitable transformed variables, we rewrite the governing equations into skew-symmetric forms and obtain continuous energy estimates by standard integration-by-parts arguments. The proposed formulations extend the skew-symmetric framework for compressible flow equations to reactive systems, where the chemical energy and the species equation must be incorporated into the transformed variables. Based on these formulations, we construct semi-discrete schemes with summation-by-parts (SBP) operators. The convective terms are discretized by the non-dissipative part of linear upwind SBP operators, while a nonlinear SBP--WENO operator is used only to supply artificial dissipation near discontinuities. For periodic boundary conditions, the resulting schemes satisfy semi-discrete energy estimates consistent with the continuous analysis. Numerical experiments in one and two space dimensions validate the designed order of accuracy and demonstrate stable performance for problems with shocks, viscous layers, detonation-type waves, and complex wave interactions.