Nektar++ is an open-source software framework designed to support the development of high-performance scalable solvers for partial differential equations using the spectral/hphp element method. High-order methods are gaining prominence in several engineering and biomedical applications due to their improved accuracy over low-order techniques at reduced computational cost for a given number of degrees of freedom. However, their proliferation is often limited by their complexity, which makes these methods challenging to implement and use. Nektar++ is an initiative to overcome this limitation by encapsulating the mathematical complexities of the underlying method within an efficient C++ framework, making the techniques more accessible to the broader scientific and industrial communities. The software supports a variety of discretisation techniques and implementation strategies, supporting methods research as well as application-focused computation, and the multi-layered structure of the framework allows the user to embrace as much or as little of the complexity as they need. The libraries capture the mathematical constructs of spectral/hphp element methods, while the associated collection of pre-written PDE solvers provides out-of-the-box application-level functionality and a template for users who wish to develop solutions for addressing questions in their own scientific domains.