about

The Virtual Worlds
Partnership

Europe brings together industry and research in a Virtual Worlds Partnership to accelerate innovation, develop skills and advance immersive applications across sectors.

The European Commission and the Virtual Worlds Association (VWA) have signed a landmark Memorandum of Understanding under Horizon Europe, creating a co-programmed partnership that will define Europe’s role in the next generation of digital environments. This initiative positions virtual worlds as essential infrastructure for industry, education, culture, and public services—aligned with European values of openness, trust, and sustainability.

VWA role

The VWA acts as a structured interface between the Virtual Worlds community and European public institutions. It supports the co-programmed Virtual Worlds Partnership under Horizon Europe, to represent the partners other than the Union.

A Public - Private Partnership

Community platform

We're growing a strong, representative European membership that can connect digitally through our upcoming hub and in-person on events. We'll also start in the summer the VWA Local network to bridge national and european representativity, starting by electing  

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 inputcan be find in our event contributions or a standalone initiatives such as teh “Virtual Worlds Café” series.

Public

Representing the European public sector by:



- Funding research (300M€)
- Propose an EU strategy for VW
- Support EU industrial ecosystem
- Empower EU talent growth
- Encourage adoption of global standards in line with EU vision &values
- Encourage public use of VW

Private

Representing the European Virtual Worlds industry by:


- Steering R&D Agenda (SRIA)
- Facilitate Public/Private dialogue
- Connect the Ecosystem
- Bring visibility to EU Players


The Virtual Worlds Partnership actions

Federate

Federate the European community working on Virtual Worlds technologies and applications

Strategize

Contribute to strategy, including the Strategic Research & Innovation Agenda (SRIA)

Collaborate

Enable collaboration through projects, pilots and multi-partner initiatives.Collaborative Research Networks

Drive adoption

Accelerate adoption,
bridging research results
to real-world markets and users

Sovereignty

Strategy
Added value for tenders
Adoption of sovereign solutions

Regulation

Interoperability Standards
Open Ecosystem

Funding

Shape Horizon Europe Calls
Promote consortiums
(Large, SMEs & Academia)

Policy

VWA as policy-influence channel
Best Practice Exchange Citizen-centric Innovation

The Virtual Worlds Partnership board

Alejandra del Valle

Secretary General

Matthieu Worm

President

Leif Oppermann

Vice-President

Laszlo Arnould

Vice-President

Francisco Ibanez

‍Treasurer

Francisco Ibanez

‍Treasurer

The VWP 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.