Abstract In this paper, we present a numerical method based on the coupling between a Curved Virtual Element Method (CVEM) and a Boundary Element Method (BEM) for the simulation of wave fields scattered by obstacles immersed in homogeneous infinite media. In particular, we consider the 2D time-domain damped wave equation, endowed with a Dirichlet condition on the boundary (sound-soft scattering). To reduce the infinite domain to a finite computational one, we introduce an artificial boundary on which we impose a Boundary Integral Non-Reflecting Boundary Condition (BI-NRBC). We apply a CVEM combined with the Crank–Nicolson time integrator in the interior domain, and we discretize the BI-NRBC by a convolution quadrature formula in time and a collocation method in space. We present some numerical results to test the performance of the proposed approach and to highlight its effectiveness, especially when obstacles with complex geometries are considered.