The first author is supported by research funds from the Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences, the University of Alabama.

We extend the theory of weighted norm inequalities on variable Lebesgue spaces to the case of bilinear operators. We introduce a bilinear version of the variable Ap(·) condition and show that it is necessary and sufficient for the bilinear maximal operator to satisfy a weighted norm inequality. Our work generalizes the linear results of the first author, Fiorenza, and Neugebauer [7] in the variable Lebesgue spaces and the bilinear results of Lerner et al. [22] in the classical Lebesgue spaces. As an application we prove weighted norm inequalities for bilinear singular integral operators in the variable Lebesgue spaces.