about us

The Official European Federation
of the Virtual Worlds stakeholders

Industry
Startups
Academia
European Commission

Our topics

We collaborate on improving and promoting immersive technologies, extended reality, digital twins, virtual collaborative spaces, interoperability, and digital skills. 

Community platform

We're growing a strong, representative European membership that can connect digitally through our upcoming hub and in-person on events. Supported by the VWA Local network initiative which will serve to bridge national and regional ecosystems with the Virtual Worlds Partnership.

SRIA

Bringing together a coalition of industrial, research centers, and companies, this strategic and guiding document sets out the main priorities, challenges, and expected impacts in terms of research and innovation for the virtual worlds industry. It explores areas of application, technological dimensions, socio-economic impacts, and governance and infrastructure issues.

Joint projects

The Association enables regional multi-partner cooperation to collaborate at European level, supporting co-creation, development and experimentation of pan-European Virtual Worlds applications and services. By facilitating consortia, we'll launch concrete projects, pilots and sector-focused initiatives.

Working groups

Create working groups and invite members to participate

Events

We support Virtual Worlds related events or industry vertical ones in three ways: Event Organization, Event Contribution and Event Participation. All focused on improving and promoting immersive technologies, extended reality, digital twins, virtual collaborative spaces, interoperability, and digital skills. 

Workshops

Online or in-person focus group session on Virtual Worlds technologies, applications per industry verticals and about the socio-economic aspect of VW. These initiatives are meant to gather stakeholder input can be find in our event contributions or a standalone initiatives such as the “Virtual Worlds Café” series.

Co-founded and led by 18 organizations spread over europe 

Team

Alejandra del Valle

Secretary General

Matthieu Worm

President

Leif Oppermann

Vice-President

Laszlo Arnould

Vice-President

Francisco Ibanez

‍Treasurer

Maud Marchal

Scientific Committee Lead

Julien Castet

Communication Lead

Spiros Nikolopoulos

IT Lead

Mike Matton

IT Lead

Frank Feinbube

Marco Sacco

Bert Pluymers

Mariano Luis Alcaniz Raya

Krzysztof Walczak

Eric Menou

Stefan Van Baelen

Didier Stricker

Kaj Helin

Ruben Lieten

The VWA is the latest item in the EC strategy on virtual worlds

2022

Political Priority
of the European Commission

The European Commission is launching a series of initiatives targeting citizens, universities, and businesses on virtual worlds.

2023

EU Strategy

The European Commission has voted and adopted an ambitious and robust strategy on virtual worlds to ensure an open, secure, trustworthy, fair and inclusive digital environment

2025

A Public-Private Cooperation for Research and Industry

The VWA acts as the European Commission’s partner to turn its innovation and industry vision into reality. We bring together the full value chain and drive synergies around the Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda.

EU Objectives

Global Influence

Encouraging adoption of global standards for open and interoperable VW in line with the EU's vision and values.

Business

Supporting a European industrial ecosystem to scale up excellence and address fragmentation.

Public use of VW

Encourage societal progress and virtual public services to leverage the opportunities

Talents growth

Empowering people to foster awareness, access to trustworthy information and build a talent pool specialists.