This paper is concerned with the filter design for nonlinear systems with time-varying delay via Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model approach. Some sufficient conditions of the existence of fuzzy H ∞ filter are established through constructing an improved Lyapunov functional candidate, which could overcome the conservatism of the existing ones. The main technique used is the free weighting matrix method combined with a matrix decoupling approach. An illustrative example is given to show the effectiveness of the method. This paper is concerned with the filter design for nonlinear systems with time-varying delay via Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy model approach. Some sufficient conditions of the existence of fuzzy H ∞ filter are established through constructing an improved Lyapunov functional candidate, which could overcome the conservatism of the existing ones. The main technique used is the free weighting matrix method combined with a matrix decoupling approach. An example example is given to show the effectiveness of the method.