This paper provides the design and the architecture of autonomic virtual routers to support automated provisioning and management of virtual networks. The Autonomic Virtual Routers (called AVR) combines the IETF ForCES (Forwarding and Control Element Separation) principle with the autonomic computing concept to build standardized, programmable, open and extensible virtual routers. The AVR can automatically manage and organize control and forwarding components and their interactions to deliver on demand virtual router services. The objective is to automatically create virtual routers in substrate nodes to support on demand virtual networks, without any human intervention.