In this article, we present a new method for visual face tracking that is carried out in a wavelet subspace. Initially, a wavelet representation for the face template is created, which spans a low-dimensional subspace of the image space. The video sequence frames, where the face is tracked, are then orthogonally projected into this subspace. This can be done efficiently through a small number of applications of the wavelet filters. All further computations are performed in the low-dimensional wavelet subspace, allowing real-time processing. An effective performance assessment is carried out to show robustness with respect to facial expression and affine deformations, as well as the efficiency of our method, which allows real-time face tracking. r 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.