Abstract This paper reports the preparation of certain newly developed Eu3+ - doped fluoroborate glasses with H3BO3 and Na2CO3 as the network formers (NWF) and the fluorides of alkali (Na or Li) as the network intermediates (NWL). Further, by adding AIF3 to the fluoroborate glasses, properties such as glass transparency; hardness; resistivity towards moisture and IR-transmission ability were found improved significantly. Under a UV source, these colourless Eu3+ - glasses did reveal brighter red emission. Compositional effects on the absorption and photoluminescence spectra of Eu: fluoroborate glasses were examined from their measured spectrophotometric profiles.