Abstract Infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) is the aetiological agent of infectious bursal disease (IBD), an immunosuppressive and highly contagious disease that affects young birds causing important economic losses in the poultry industry worldwide. Currently, vaccination programmes with inactivated and live-attenuated viruses have been used to prevent IBD. However, these vaccines present a number of disadvantages, mainly because of their viral nature. Consequently, in the last two decades, many studies have been conducted in order to replace conventional virus-based vaccines by new, rationally designed vaccines that are safer as well as effective. In this review, we will present a background on the disease and its causative agent, and focus on the development of new generation vaccines against this significant poultry disease.