diff --git a/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/paraview/package.py b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/paraview/package.py
index aaab352e662..e43bdd44930 100644
--- a/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/paraview/package.py
+++ b/var/spack/repos/builtin/packages/paraview/package.py
@@ -14,6 +14,7 @@ class Paraview(Package):
 
     variant('osmesa', default=False, description='Enable OSMesa support')
     variant('qt', default=False, description='Enable Qt support')
+    variant('opengl2', default=False, description='Enable OPengl2 backend')
 
     depends_on('python', when='+python')
     depends_on('py-numpy', when='+python')