  M-dwarf stars are the dominant stellar population in the MilkyWay and they
are important for a wide variety of astrophysical topics. The Gaia mission has
delivered a superb collection of data, nevertheless, ground-based photometric
surveys are still needed to study faint objects. Therefore, the present work
aims to identify and characterise M-dwarf stars in the direction of the
Galactic bulge using photometric data and with the help of Virtual Observatory
tools. Using parallax measurements and proper motions from Gaia Data Release 3,
in addition to different colour-cuts based on VISTA filters, we identify and
characterise 7 925 M-dwarf stars in the b294 field from the Vista Variables in
the V\'ia L\'actea (VVV) survey. We performed a spectral energy distribution
fitting to obtain the effective temperature for all objects using photometric
information available at Virtual Observatory archives. The objects in our
sample have temperatures varying from 2800 to 3900 K. We also search for
periodic signals in VVV light curves with up to 300 epochs, approximately. As a
secondary outcome, we obtain periods for 82 M dwarfs by applying two methods:
the Lomb-Scargle and Phase Dispersion Minimization methods, independently.
These objects, with periods ranging from 0.14 to 34 d, are good candidates for
future ground-based follow up. Our sample has increased significantly the
number of known M dwarfs in the direction of the Galactic bulge and within 500
pc, showing the importance of ground-based photometric surveys in the
near-infrared.
