The article explores the concept, features, legal regime of virtual museums. The historical stages of development and formation of virtual museums are analyzed. For the concept of the logic of constructing the definition of "virtual museum", identifying its constructive features, some of the definitions existing in the doctrine are systematized in chronological order, and an analysis of the frequency of use of semantic units by the authors is carried out. The possibility of applying the legal regime of the database, multimedia works in relation to virtual museums is considered. The author singled out and studied the following features of a virtual museum: complexity, the presence of a computer program (original program code) in the structure, virtuality, interactivity, digital form of expression. The paper analyzes and systematizes the theoretical positions on the research topic, studied doctrinal approaches. Based on the results of the study, the author's definition of the concept of "virtual museum" is proposed.