The LHCb VELO upgrade

The LHCb experiment plans to have a fully upgraded detector and data acquisition system in order to take data with instantaneous luminosities up to 5 times greater than currently. For this reason the first tracking and vertexing detector, the VELO, will be completely redesigned to be able to cope with the much larger occupancies and data acquisition rates. Two main design alternatives, micro-strips or pixel detectors, are under consideration to build the upgraded detector. This paper describes the options presently under consideration, as well as a few highlights of the main aspects of the current R&D. Preliminary results using a pixel telescope are also presented.