["JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, EarlyView. ", "\nAbstract\nA growing number of subregional groups influence European Union policy‐making as platforms of information exchange, expertise pooling or compromise‐building. Yet, our understanding of how they function as policy‐making actors remains limited. This article seeks to alleviate this knowledge gap by developing the concept of subregional actorness and proposing an empirical typology based on political will and policy convergence. It uses examples from the Visegrad Group's activities in the fields of enlargement, foreign affairs and migration to show how subregional co‐operation looks like in each of the four proposed modes of actorness. The analysis suggests that the quality of top politicians' personal relationships with each other and the presence of political differences of strategic importance are the most influential factors shaping subregional actorness, but the impact of policy crises and the history of close co‐operation in a given policy field are also important."]