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The instability of longitudinally variable speed viscoelastic plates in contact with ideal liquid is studied for the first time. The effect of free surface waves is taken into account in the present study. The viscoelasticity is considered by using the Kelvin–Voigt viscoelastic constitutive relations. The classical theory of thin plate is utilized to derive the governing equation of variable speed plates. The fluid is assumed to be incompressible, inviscid and irrotational. Additionally, the velocity potential and Bernoulli’s equation are utilized to describe the fluid pressure acting on the vibrating plates. The fluid effect on the vibrational plates is described as the added mass of the plates which can be formulated by the kinematic boundary conditions at the structure–fluid interfaces. Parametric instability is analyzed by directly applying the method of multiple scales to the governing partial-differential equations and boundary conditions. The unstable boundaries are derived from the solvability conditions and the Routh–Hurwitz criterion for principal parametric, sum-type and difference-type combination resonances. Based on the numerical simulation, the effects of some key parameters on the unstable boundaries are illustrated in the excitation frequency and excitation amplitude plane in detail.