AbstractIn this paper we consider the initial boundary value problem for a viscoelastic wave equation with strong damping and logarithmic nonlinearity of the form $$ u_{tt}(x,t) - \Delta u (x,t) + \int ^{t}_{0} g(t-s) \Delta u(x,s)\,ds - \Delta u_{t} (x,t) = \bigl\vert u(x,t) \bigr\vert ^{p-2} u(x,t) \ln \bigl\vert u(x,t) \bigr\vert $$utt(x,t)−Δu(x,t)+∫0tg(t−s)Δu(x,s)ds−Δut(x,t)=|u(x,t)|p−2u(x,t)ln|u(x,t)| in a bounded domain $\varOmega \subset {\mathbb{R}}^{n} $Ω⊂Rn, where g is a nonincreasing positive function. Firstly, we prove the existence and uniqueness of local weak solutions by using Faedo–Galerkin’s method and contraction mapping principle. Then we establish a finite time blow-up result for the solution with positive initial energy as well as nonpositive initial energy.