In these proceedings, the key role played by the Higgs boson associated production (VH) mode in the characterization of the electroweak spontaneous symmetry breaking mechanism is described through a review of the latest results from the ATLAS and CMS experiments obtained with the data collected during LHC Run 2. A focus is given to the recent discovery of the Higgs boson decay to a bottom quark-antiquark pair by ATLAS and CMS achieved through the analysis of the additional data collected during 2017. A review of the ATLAS and CMS searches for $\mathrm{VH(H\rightarrow W W)}$ is also provided together with a summary of the role played by the VH production mechanism in the $\mathrm{H\rightarrow \tau\tau}$ observation carried out by CMS and in the challenging search for the Higgs boson decay to charm quarks published by ATLAS in the beginning of LHC Run 2.