Thin films of titanium vanadium nitride (Ti1´xVx N) were grown onto WC-Co sub-strates by reactive cathodic arc deposition. Three distinct cathodes were used resulting inseven different compositions for each of the four different substrate biases -25 V, -40 V, -80 V and -100 V. Characterisation was done to investigate the phase, texture, compositionand mechanical properties by X-ray diffractometry (XRD), scanning electron microscopy(SEM), energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy, nanoindentation and transmission electronmicroscopy (TEM). A fcc TiVN structure dominated for all samples. The texture of thesamples was calculated and a strong (1 1 1) texture for -80 V and -100 V substrate biasesand a nearly random texture for -25 V and -40 V were found. Coatings with a high vana-dium content had a (2 0 0) texture for all substrate biases. The samples showed an increasedstress at higher substrate biases, but a decreased stress for higher vanadium content. Allfilms with the highest vanadium content a low compressive stress for all substrate biases.A decreased number of macroparticles was found at larger substrate biases and higher tita-nium content. A columnar growth was observed for all films, the surface texture was foundto change with an increase in vanadium composition and substrate bias. The samples withhighest vanadium contents deposited at -80 V and -100 V showed an additional hexagonalphase. The hexagonal phase was not found to have any significant impact on hardness,but could influence the low stress of the highest vanadium content. The grain size showedno significant difference between the films except for the mixed phase samples which hadsmaller grains due to competitive growth. The hardness of the samples were found to belie between 28 and 31 GPa for low vanadium contents, but decreased quickly for largervanadium contents to 21 GPa at the highest vanadium content. All compositions showedan increase in hardness of 3 GPa when substrate bias was changed from -25 V to -100 V.