The paper introduces ERA5-Land, an enhanced global dataset for land applications, produced by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) as part of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). ERA5-Land is an extension of the fifth-generation European Reanalysis (ERA5) and covers the period from 1950 to the present, with continuous updates. The dataset provides hourly estimates of 50 variables describing the water and energy cycles over land at a spatial resolution of 9 km, which is an improvement over the 31 km resolution of ERA5 and the 80 km resolution of the older ERA-Interim. The production of ERA5-Land involves three independent streams, each initialized with meteorological fields from ERA5, and uses a high-resolution numerical integration of the ECMWF land surface model driven by downscaled meteorological forcing from ERA5. The evaluation of ERA5-Land against in situ observations and global model or satellite-based reference datasets shows its added value in describing the hydrological cycle, particularly in soil moisture and lake description, and better agreement with river discharge estimations. However, snow depth fields show mixed performance compared to ERA5. The dataset is valuable for hydrological studies, initializing numerical weather prediction and climate models, and supporting diverse applications related to water resources, land, and environmental management.The paper introduces ERA5-Land, an enhanced global dataset for land applications, produced by the European Centre for Medium-range Weather Forecasts (ECMWF) as part of the Copernicus Climate Change Service (C3S). ERA5-Land is an extension of the fifth-generation European Reanalysis (ERA5) and covers the period from 1950 to the present, with continuous updates. The dataset provides hourly estimates of 50 variables describing the water and energy cycles over land at a spatial resolution of 9 km, which is an improvement over the 31 km resolution of ERA5 and the 80 km resolution of the older ERA-Interim. The production of ERA5-Land involves three independent streams, each initialized with meteorological fields from ERA5, and uses a high-resolution numerical integration of the ECMWF land surface model driven by downscaled meteorological forcing from ERA5. The evaluation of ERA5-Land against in situ observations and global model or satellite-based reference datasets shows its added value in describing the hydrological cycle, particularly in soil moisture and lake description, and better agreement with river discharge estimations. However, snow depth fields show mixed performance compared to ERA5. The dataset is valuable for hydrological studies, initializing numerical weather prediction and climate models, and supporting diverse applications related to water resources, land, and environmental management.