The Joint UK Land Environment Simulator (JULES) is a process-based community model that simulates the fluxes of carbon, water, energy and momentum between the land surface and the atmosphere. Configurations of JULES underpin important science applications including the Earth system, global land, hydrology, UK environmental prediction and climate impact modelling. This indefinite special issue covers all publications covering JULES model development, evaluation and benchmarking; the documentation of the code includes schemes and parameterisations. Also included are papers covering the major scientific configurations of JULES that should be a starting point for model application and development. This special issue supports the information available through the JULES code repository (https://code.metoffice.gov.uk/trac/jules). Licences are available here http://jules-lsm.github.io/access_req/JULES_Licence.pdf.