Multiple interval graphs are a well-known generalization of interval graphs introduced in the 1970s to deal with situations arising naturally in scheduling and allocation. A d-interval is the union of d intervals on the real line, and a graph is a d-interval graph if it is the intersection graph of d-intervals. In particular, it is a unit d-interval graph if it admits a d-interval representation where every interval has unit length. Whereas it has been known for a long time that recognizing 2-interval graphs and other related classes such as 2-track interval graphs is NP-complete, the complexity of recognizing unit 2-interval graphs remains open. Here, we settle this question by proving that the recognition of unit 2-interval graphs is also NP-complete. Our proof technique uses a completely different approach from the other hardness results of recognizing related classes. Furthermore, we extend the result for unit d-interval graphs for any d ⩾ 2, which does not follow directly in graph recognition problems -as an example, it took almost 20 years to close the gap between d = 2 and d > 2 for the recognition of d-track interval graphs. Our result has several implications, including that recognizing (x, …, x) d-interval graphs and depth r unit 2-interval graphs is NP-complete for every x ⩾ 11 and every r ⩾ 4.