The $\tau$ lepton is an important part of the final states of many standard model processes in proton-proton collisions at the LHC. It also appears in many signatures of predicted new physics beyond the standard model.
As it decays predominantly to hadrons, it is essential for the physics program at ATLAS and CMS to have a faithful reconstruction and identification of hadronic $\tau$ lepton decays, and a strong suppression of backgrounds.
In the following, the ATLAS and CMS algorithms for the reconstruction and identification of hadronic $\tau$ lepton decays are presented, and their performance in proton-proton collision data collected during Run 2 of the LHC is discussed.