In this paper, we establish that complete Kac–Moody groups over finite fields are abstractly simple. The proof makes essential use of Mathieu and Rousseau’s construction of complete Kac–Moody groups over fields. This construction has the advantage that both real and imaginary root spaces of the Lie algebra lift to root subgroups over arbitrary fields. A key point in our proof is the fact, of independent interest, that both real and imaginary root subgroups are contracted by conjugation of positive powers of suitable Weyl group elements.