The papers in this special section focus on human face and body image analysis, one of the most researched objects. One of the main reasons behind this popularity lies in the numerous applications of automatic face and body gesture analysis algorithms, that span several fields such as Human-Computer and Human-Robot Interaction (facial expression/body gesture recognition for automatic analysis of affect), medicine and healthcare (detection of emotional and cognitive disorders), as well as biometrics (face recognition, gait recognition). The papers in this section focus on recent efforts towards catalysing progress in automatic analysis of human behaviour in uncontrolled, “in-the-wild” conditions. We summarize research efforts towards the development of research methodologies, database collections and benchmarks, as well as algorithms and systems for machine analysis of human behaviour, focusing on facial expressions, body gestures, speech, as well as various other sensors. We are delighted that the special issue includes authors both from academia as well as the industry.