Sparse grids are a popular tool for the numerical treatment of high-dimensional problems. Where classical numerical discretization schemes fail in more than three or four dimensions, sparse grids, in their different flavors, are frequently the method of choice. This volume of LNCSE presents selected papers from the proceedings of the fifth workshop on sparse grids and applications, and demonstrates once again the importance of this numerical discretization scheme. The articles present recent advances in the numerical analysis of sparse grids in connection with a range of applications including uncertainty quantification, plasma physics simulations, and computational chemistry, to name but a few.