Next generation of advanced hard coatings for tribological applications should combine the advantages of hard wear resistant coatings with low-friction films. In this study, the tribological behaviour of vanadium pentoxide (V 2 O 5 ) single-layer as well as VN-V 2 O 5 bi-layer coatings was investigated in the temperature ranging between 25 and 600°C. For VN-V 2 O 5 bi-layer coatings, the V 2 O 5 toplayers were deposited by dc and bipolar-pulsed dc reactive magnetron sputtering, where the V 2 O 5 phase shows preferred growth orientation in (200) and (110), respectively. The V 2 O 5 single-layer coatings were prepared by dc reactive magnetron sputtering with a substrate bias of -80 V which leads to a preferred (200) growth orientation. Tribological properties were evaluated using a ball-on-disc configuration in ambient air with alumina balls as counterpart. The structure of the as-deposited films and eventual changes after tribometer testing were identified using X-ray diffraction, Raman spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy. The friction coefficient of VN-V 2 O 5 bi-layer coatings deposited in dc and pulsed dc mode decreases from room temperature to 600°C, where the pulsed dc VN-V 2 O 5 coatings have a significantly lower coefficient of friction over the whole testing temperatures reaching a value of 0.28 at 600°C. Up to 400°C, V 2 O 5 single-layer coatings showed almost the same coefficient of friction as pulsed dc VN-V 2 O 5 bi-layer coatings but reached a value of 0.15 at 600°C. It seems that thermal activation of crystallographic slip systems is necessary for V 2 O 5 films to show a low-friction effect.