Ronen Mukamel and Bob Handsaker’s paper on phenotypic effects of noncoding variable number tandem repeats (VNTRs) (Mukamel*, Handsaker* et al. 2023 Cell) is now published — congratulations, Ronen and Bob! This work leveraged whole-genome sequencing data in large cohorts together with long-read assemblies from HGSVC2 to analyze 9,561 VNTRs genome-wide for effects on 786 phenotypes in UK Biobank. Highlights of association and fine-mapping results include a common intronic repeat polymorphism in TMCO1 for which the longest alleles (top 3%) confer higher glaucoma risk (OR=1.51 [1.42–1.60]) than any other common variant genome-wide, and a VNTR polymorphism downstream of EIF3H at which common repeat length variation generates a >2-fold range of colorectal cancer risk across individuals. Several other associations between VNTRs and complex traits appeared to reflect regulation of gene expression or splicing mediated by non-coding VNTRs.