This work focuses on phenomena arising during the heating process at the beginning of steel heat treatment. It has been prepared within the Collaborative Research Centre SFB 570 ‘Distortion Engineering’ at the University of Bremen. In order to predict the distortion of steel components during heat treatment, a detailed knowledge of the arising phenomena is crucial. There can arise creep due to the underlying high temperatures as well as transformation‐induced plasticity (TRIP) during the austenitisation. This contribution focuses on the modelling of creep, phase transformations and TRIP of 100Cr6 (SAE 52100) steel during heating and austenitisation. The proposed model approaches are verified on the basis of experimental data stemming from uniaxial experiments. We provide material laws of the considered phenomena as well as the evaluation of experimental data. The simultaneous occurrence of creep and TRIP represents a special challenge in the analysis of experimental data as well as in the verification of model approaches.