  We report the first search for new star clusters performed using the VISTA
near-infrared YJKs Magellanic Clouds survey (VMC) data sets. We chose a pilot
field of ~ 0.4 deg^2 located in the South-West of the Small Magelllanic Cloud
(SMC) bar, where the star field is among the densest and highest reddened
region in the galaxy. In order to devise an appropriate automatic procedure we
made use of dimensions and stellar densities observed in the VMC data sets of
the known clusters in this area. We executed different kernel density
estimations over a sample of more than 358000 stars with magnitudes measured in
the three YJKs filters. We analysed the new cluster candidates whose
colour-magnitude diagrams (CMDs), cleaned from field star contamination, were
used to assess the clusters' reality and estimate reddenings and ages of the
genuine systems. As a result 38 objects (~ a 55% increase in the known star
clusters located in the surveyed field) of 0.15 - 0.40 arcmin (2.6 - 7.0 pc) in
radius resulted to have near-infrared CMD features which resemble those of star
clusters of young to moderate intermediate age (log(t /yr ) ~ 7.5-9.0). Most of
the new star cluster candidates are hardly recognizable in optical images
without the help of a sound star field decontaminated CMD analysis. For highly
reddened star cluster candidates (E(B - V ) >= 0.6 mag) the VMC data sets were
necessary in order to recognize them.
