Abstract: Highlights•A novel Virtual Reality (VR)-based Brain-computer interface (BCI) interaction system for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle cluster (UAV) control.•Blends actual and virtual scenes to achieve immersive control of UAV clusters.•Implementing a new stimulus module and intelligent search paradigm to improve the intelligence of BCI controlled UAV clusters.•The proposed method achieves 90% accuracy and exemplary performance in information transfer rate.