Welcome to the proceedings of the 9th International Conference on Intelligent Virtual Agents held September 14-16 2009 in Amsterdam The Netherlands. Intelligent virtual agents (IVAs) are interactive characters that exhibit hum- like qualities and communicate with humans or with each other using natural human modalities such as speech and gesture. They are capable of real-time perception cognition and action allowing them to participate in a dynamic physical and social environment. IVA is an interdisciplinary annual conference and the main forum for p- senting research on modeling developing and evaluating IVAs with a focus on communicative abilities and social behavior. The development of IVAs requires expertise in multimodal interaction and several AI ?elds such as cognitive m- eling planning vision and natural language processing. Computational models are typically based on experimental studies and theories of human-human and human-robot interaction; conversely IVA technology may provide interesting lessons for these ?elds. The realization of engaging IVAs is a challenging task so reusable modules and tools are of great value. The ?elds of application range from robot assistants social simulation and tutoring to games and artistic - ploration.