A natural concept of variety for regular semigroups is introduced: an existence variety (or e-variety) of regular semigroups is a class of regular semigroups closed under the operations H, Se, P of taking all homomorphic images, regular subsernigroups and direct products respectively. Examples include the class of orthodox semigroups, the class of (regular) locally inverse semigroups and the class of regular E-solid semigroups. The lattice of e-varieties of regular semigroups includes the lattices of varieties of inverse semigroups and of completely regular semigroups. A Birkhoff-type theorem is proved, showing that each e-variety is determined by a set of identities: such identities are then given for many e-varieties. The concept is meaningful in universal algebra, and as for regular semigroups could give interesting results for e-varieties of regular rings.