Methods and apparatus for application and/or context-based management of virtual networks using customizable workflows are disclosed. An example apparatus includes a context engine to monitor data traffic from a virtual machine in a data plane of a virtual network to capture context information to identify an application executing on the virtual machine; and a policy manager to receive the context information to instantiate an application entity corresponding to the application in a policy plane of the virtual network and to generate a policy associated with the application entity in the policy plane of the virtual network, the policy and the application entity enabling monitoring and management of the application via the policy plane.