Embodiments of the present invention relate to the migration of virtual machines (VMs) between networked computing environments (e.g., cloud computing environments) based on resource utilization. Specifically, embodiments of the present invention provide an approach to select an optimal set (one or more) of VMs as candidates for pre-staged migration. In a typical embodiment, when a first cloud environment nears physical resource capacity, an optimal set of VMs will be identified for migration to a second cloud environment that has sufficient capacity to accommodate workload(s) from the first cloud environment. To make this process more efficient, data associated with the set of virtual machines may be “pre-stage” replicated from the first cloud environment to the second cloud environment (e.g., in advance of the migration of the identified set of VMs).