Years of the Maritime Continent (YMC) is a multi-year international program with participants from over 15 countries. Its overarching goal is to expedite the progress of improving understanding and prediction of local oceanic and atmospheric multi-scale variability of the Indo-Pacific Maritime Continent (MC) and its global impact through observations and modeling exercises. YMC is motivated by unique role of the MC in the local and global weather-climate system, our lack of understanding of the key processes governing this role, and persistent systematic regional biases and errors in numerical models. YMC builds a comprehensive database of the MC weather-climate system and educates the next generation of scientists who will be the core workforce and leaders to further advance the study of the MC.