The enhanced 3XMM catalogue (designated 3XMMe) is one of the core elements of the Arches project, representing the X-ray source basis for the cross-correlations with other multi-wavelength catalogues. The 3XMMe catalogue is a derivative of the latest increment of the 3XMM catalogue, i.e. 3XMM-DR5, that was publicly released in April 2015 (Rosen et al., 2016A&A...590A...1R, Cat. XI/46)), tailored for the purposes of the Arches project. The 3XMM-DR5 catalogue, available from the XMM-Newton Science Archive (http://xmm.esac.esa.int/xsa/), the XMM-Newton Survey Science Centre (SSC) (http://xmmssc.irap.omp.eu) and other sites listed on the SSC site, contains 565962 detections arising from 396910 unique sources drawn from 7781 XMM observations. These numbers include detections from 356 sub-pointings made in mosaic mode. Arches wed site : http://www.arches-fp7.eu .