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As media budgets do not increase with the same speed as the rise of complementary media, the right media choice has become more important as well as more difficult. Especially for local and regional news organizations that deal with budget reductions, a decline of youth willing to pay for news and an increase of media that provide free access to ‘news’ pose great challenges. In the context of an already complicated media strategy puzzle, Virtual Reality (VR) has entered the news domain. VR, according to journalists, might be a new means to reach the audience. However, local and regional VR productions almost do not exist, making it unclear how to create local/regional VR news and how to implement this effectively in the newsrooms. VIRGiN reveals types of local/regional stories and storytelling techniques that fit VR based on research among local/regional journalists and editors from Omroep Brabant and Breda Vandaag and their (potential) young audiences. Based on this, two local and regional VR news proof of concepts will be created: One grounded on journalist input, while the other concentrates on user generated VR news. These activities will reveal the ideal local and regional stories and storytelling techniques and best ways to motivate, make use of and share (user generated) VR content. The proof of concepts, together with production and process reports, will provide tangible examples and guidelines for local and regional journalists to learn whether and how to implement VR in their stories. This project is a stepping stone towards a larger (inter)national collaboration on VR news creation.