Volcanic eruptions are one of the major natural factors influencing climate variability at interannual to multidecadal timescales. However, simulating volcanically forced climate variability is a challenging task for climate models and one of the major uncertainties in near-term climate predictions. The Model Intercomparison Project on the climatic response to Volcanic forcing (VolMIP) is an endorsed contribution to the sixth phase of the Coupled Model Intercomparison Project. This multi-journal special issue on VolMIP aims at collecting relevant research results obtained within the VolMIP framework, and specifically concerning different aspects of the radiative and dynamical climatic response to volcanic forcing, detailed description of effects of different implementation of volcanic forcing in current climate models, aspects concerning the dynamical and chemical atmospheric response to volcanic aerosols simulated by global aerosol models, and comparison between reconstructed and simulated climate evolution after major eruptions.