The formation of ice in clouds is critically important for the planet's climate. Hence, we need to know which aerosol types nucleate ice and how effectively they do so. Here we show that virus particles, with a range of architectures, nucleate ice when immersed in supercooled water. However, we also show that they only make a minor contribution to the ice-nucleating particle population in the terrestrial atmosphere, but we cannot rule them out as being important in the marine environment.