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tokens: for studies of the host galaxies of AGN ( Kauffmann et al. 2003 ). When using the Vanden Berk et al. (2001) template, it is important to know that it contains significant host galaxy contamination, in particular at redder wavelengths (e.g., Fynbo et al. 2013 , their Fig. 5). In this paper, we use data from the X-Shooter spectrograph to build a new QSO template that covers the full range from rest-frame Ly to 11 350 Å based on bright SDSS QSOs and observed with a single instrument over this spectral range. In Sect. 3 we describe the sample selection and provide details of the observations. Section 4 describes the construction of the composite spectrum, and Sect. 5 presents the resulting composite. In Sect. 6 we perform a comparison with existing composites and in Sect. 7 offer our conclusion. We use the cosmological parameters from Planck Collaboration XVI (2014) with km s Mpc, , and throughout the entire paper. 2. Issues with the currently most used template The currently most widely used QSO template is the SDSS template of Vanden Berk et al. (2001) . As described very clearly in that paper, the SDSS composite spectrum shows a significant change to a shallower spectral slope around 5000 Å. This is mainly attributed to contaminating light from the underlying host galaxies. Other effects also contribute, such as the emission from a hot dust component, but the dominating factor is probably the host contamination. Our main motivation for building a QSO template without this problem is the following: a search for dust-reddened QSOs using near-IR (NIR) selection of QSOs has been initiated ( Fynbo et al. 2013 ; Krogager et al. 2015 ). In the central southern SDSS footprint, Stripe 82 ( Annis et al. 2014 ), about 50 such candidate QSOs have been studied using the New Technology Telescope (NTT). Although the search was for QSOs reddened by foreground absorber galaxies, most systems turned out to be QSOs reddened by dust in their host galaxies. The optical spectra can be matched well by the SDSS template spectrum reddened by SMC-like extinction curve, but the NIR (rest frame optical) photometry from the UKIRT Infrared Deep Sky Survey (UKIDSS) cannot be simultaneously fitted. The problem is illustrated in Fig. 6 in Fynbo et al. (2013) , where they attempt to model the EFOSC2 spectrum of a dust-reddened QSO at observed in that survey. As seen, the SDSS spectrum and photometry can be matched well with the Vanden Berk template, but the photometry from UKIDSS is much too blue for even the unreddened template. This is not a unique case, but a problem that is seen for all the dust-reddened QSOs found in their search. In the SDSS composite, the QSOs which contribute to the spectrum at 5000 Å have to be at fairly low redshifts (). These QSOs have absolute magnitudes that are three to four magnitudes fainter than bright QSOs (e.g., Vanden Berk et al. 2001 , their Fig. 1). They are also likely to have the brightest rest frame optical host galaxies, so host