Computational models of biological systems can exploit on a broad range of rapidly developing approaches, including novel experimental approaches, bioinformatics data analysis, emerging modelling paradigms, data standards, and algorithms. A discussion about the most recent advances among experts from various domains is crucial to foster data-driven computational modelling and its growing use in assessing and predicting the behaviour of biological systems. Intending to encourage the development of tools, approaches, and predictive models, and to deepen our understanding of biological systems, the Community of Special Interest (COSI) was launched in Computational Modelling of Biological Systems (SysMod) in 2016. SysMod’s main activity is an annual meeting at the Intelligent Systems for Molecular Biology (ISMB) conference, which brings together computer scientists, biologists, mathematicians, engineers, computational and systems biologists. In the five years since its inception, SysMod has evolved into a dynamic and expanding community as the increasing number of contributions and participants illustrate. SysMod maintains several online resources to facilitate interaction among the community members, including an online forum, a calendar of relevant meetings, and a YouTube channel with talks and lectures of interest for the modelling community. Since more than half a decade, the growing interest in computational systems modelling and multi-scale data integration has continued to inspire and support the SysMod community. Its members get progressively more involved and actively contribute not only to the annual COSI meeting but also to several related community workshops and meetings, which focus on specific topics, including particular techniques for computational modelling or standardisation efforts.