Plant cells exhibit remarkable developmental plasticity, including the ability to regenerate at different stages of their life-cycle; a processes requiring the cellular reprogramming of a pool of non-differentiated or already differentiated cells. This special issue on ‘Cellular Reprogramming in Plants’ (introduced by Sugimoto et al. on pp. 651–655) focuses on two major occurrences: symbiotic interactions, where micro-organisms reprogram plant cells to aid their associations; and plant regeneration, where cells undergo reprogramming to repair or replenish wounded tissues or to make entire organisms de novo.