In order to provide high‐quality services, current communication systems require high data‐transmission rate and good error performance. Single carrier‐frequency division multiple access (SC‐FDMA) has been adopted as the uplink transmission standard in fourth generation cellular network to enable the power efficiency transmission in mobile station. Multi‐user multiple‐input multiple‐output (MU–MIMO) technologies are adopted in many standards to enhance the data rate and the link robustness. By combining MU–MIMO techniques with the SC‐FDMA modulation scheme, MU–MIMO SC‐FDMA systems can achieve high data rates over broadband wireless channels. For MU–MIMO SC‐FDMA systems, possible detection techniques include zero‐forcing detection, minimum mean squared error detection and maximum likelihood detection (MLD). Among these schemes, MLD is optimal, but its complexity grows exponentially with the number of symbols detected. As a result, there are demands for near MLD schemes that provide similar performance with less complexity. In this paper, we consider the MU–MIMO SC‐FDMA communication and propose a low‐complexity and high‐performance turbo receiver for the systems. Some simulation examples for uplink scenario are given to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.