In this paper, a fault tolerant control (FTC) strategy for proton exchange membrane (PEM) fuel cells based on the use of virtual actuators and the Takagi-Sugeno (TS) approach is proposed. The overall solution relies on adding a virtual actuator in the control loop to hide the fault from the controller point of view, allowing it to see the same plant as before the fault, such that the stability and some desired performances are preserved. The proposed methodology is based on the use of a reference model, where the resulting nonlinear error model is brought to a Takagi-Sugeno form using a gridding approach. The TS model is suitable for designing a controller using-linear matrix inequalities (LMI)-based techniques, such that the resulting closed-loop error system is stable with poles placed in some desired region of the complex plane. Simulation results are used, to show the effectiveness of the proposed approach. (C) 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.