► Human well-being depends on multiple ecosystem services, many of them being underpinned by biodiversity. ► Biodiversity continues to be lost at an unprecedented rate. ► Decision-makers and policy-makers require sound scientific foundation to secure the planet's biodiversity and ecosystem services, while contributing to human well-being and poverty eradication. ► The new DIVERSITAS vision is built around four main research challenges to help guide the global research community towards this foundation. DIVERSITAS, the international programme on biodiversity science, is releasing a strategic vision presenting scientific challenges for the next decade of research on biodiversity and ecosystem services: “Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services Science for a Sustainable Planet”. This new vision is a response of the biodiversity and ecosystem services scientific community to the accelerating loss of the components of biodiversity, as well as to changes in the biodiversity science-policy landscape (establishment of a Biodiversity Observing Network—GEO BON, of an Intergovernmental science-policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services—IPBES, of the new Future Earth initiative; and release of the Strategic Plan for Biodiversity 2011–2020). This article presents the vision and its core scientific challenges.