jats:titleAbstract</jats:title> jats:pWe show that cosmological sudden singularities that respect the energy conditions can occur at finite times in Brans–Dicke and more general scalar-tensor theories of gravity. We construct these explicitly in the Friedmann universes. Higher-order versions of these singularities are also possible, including those that arise with when scalar fields have a self-interaction potential of power-law form.</jats:p>