The VIth Report of the International Committee on Taxonomy of Viruses (ICTV) was published in 1995. We have briefly characterized its contents and discussed the most important changes that have been made in the classification of viruses of vertebrates. The present line up of families and genera of viruses of vertebrates, and subviral agents and unassigned viruses is also provided. We propose an allocation of families of viruses of vertebrates according to a conjectural evolutional connection between the type and class of genomic nucleic acid. Finally the directions and intentions of the ICTV have been reviewed from the Virology Division News in Archives of Virology (1994/1995). These will be considered in the VIIth Report of the ICTV scheduled for publication after the XIth International Congress of Virology in Sydney in 1999.