This paper addresses the questions of existence and uniqueness of strong solutions to the homogeneous Dirichlet problem for the double phase equation with operators of variable growth:wheregiven nonnegative coefficient, and the nonlinear source term has the formThe variable exponents p, q, σ are given functions defined on Q T , p, q are Lipschitz-continuous andWe find conditions on the functions f 0 , a, b, σ and u 0 sufficient for the existence of a unique strong solution with the following global regularity and integrability properties:The same results are established for the equation with the regularized flux∇u + a(z)(ǫ 2 + |∇u| 2 ) q(z)−2 2 ∇u, ǫ > 0.