In this work, a new synthesis approach is proposed to design fixed-order H8 controllers for linear parameter-varying (LPV) systems described by input-output (I/O) models with polynomial dependence on the scheduling variables. First, by exploiting a suitable technique for polytopic outer approximation of semi-algebraic sets, the closed loop system is equivalently rewritten as an LPV I/O model depending affinely on an augmented scheduling parameter vector constrained inside a polytope. Then, the problem is reformulated in terms of bilinear matrix inequalities (BMI) and solved by means of a suitable semidefinite relaxation technique.