diff --git a/src/lerobot/policies/vla_jepa/configuration_vla_jepa.py b/src/lerobot/policies/vla_jepa/configuration_vla_jepa.py
index 7fa7fd20d..d104b5456 100644
--- a/src/lerobot/policies/vla_jepa/configuration_vla_jepa.py
+++ b/src/lerobot/policies/vla_jepa/configuration_vla_jepa.py
@@ -15,11 +15,13 @@
 from __future__ import annotations
 
 from dataclasses import dataclass, field
+from typing import Any
 
 from lerobot.configs.policies import PreTrainedConfig
-from lerobot.configs.types import NormalizationMode
+from lerobot.configs.types import FeatureType, NormalizationMode, PolicyFeature
 from lerobot.optim.optimizers import AdamWConfig
 from lerobot.optim.schedulers import CosineDecayWithWarmupSchedulerConfig
+from lerobot.utils.constants import OBS_STATE
 
 
 @PreTrainedConfig.register_subclass("vla_jepa")
@@ -130,6 +132,26 @@ class VLAJEPAConfig(PreTrainedConfig):
         if self.robot_state_feature is not None:
             self.state_dim = self.robot_state_feature.shape[0]
 
+    def set_dataset_feature_metadata(self, dataset_features: dict[str, Any]) -> None:
+        """Declare `observation.state` as an input feature so the normalizer picks it up.
+
+        `make_policy` only fills `input_features` from the dataset when it is empty, so a
+        fine-tune inheriting `input_features` from a pretrained checkpoint keeps that
+        checkpoint's keys. The starVLA bases were vision-only, so `observation.state` was
+        absent — and `NormalizerProcessorStep` iterates its `features` dict, meaning the
+        state reached `VLAJEPAActionHead.state_encoder` as raw joint values (tens of
+        degrees) while every other token in the DiT sequence is O(1).
+
+        This hook (invoked by `make_policy` once the dataset metadata is known, before the
+        processors are built) adds the key back, so `STATE: MEAN_STD` applies. The
+        relative-action step runs *before* the normalizer and caches the raw state, so the
+        relative/absolute round-trip is unaffected.
+        """
+        if OBS_STATE in self.input_features or OBS_STATE not in dataset_features:
+            return
+        shape = tuple(dataset_features[OBS_STATE]["shape"])
+        self.input_features[OBS_STATE] = PolicyFeature(type=FeatureType.STATE, shape=shape)
+
     def get_optimizer_preset(self) -> AdamWConfig:
         return AdamWConfig(
             lr=self.optimizer_lr,
diff --git a/src/lerobot/policies/vla_jepa/modeling_vla_jepa.py b/src/lerobot/policies/vla_jepa/modeling_vla_jepa.py
index 962f2b6fb..2c4902380 100644
--- a/src/lerobot/policies/vla_jepa/modeling_vla_jepa.py
+++ b/src/lerobot/policies/vla_jepa/modeling_vla_jepa.py
@@ -452,7 +452,13 @@ class VLAJEPAPolicy(PreTrainedPolicy):
         state = batch.get(OBS_STATE)
         if state is not None:
             if state.ndim > 2:
-                state = state[:, -1, :]
+                # `observation_delta_indices` is FORWARD-looking here (it feeds future frames to the
+                # world model), so a stacked state is [B, T_obs, dim] at deltas 0, +stride, ..., and
+                # index 0 — not -1 — is the CURRENT observation. Taking [:, -1] would condition the
+                # action head on the state at the END of the chunk during training while inference
+                # (single frame, ndim == 2) passes the current state, and the relative-action anchor
+                # in RelativeActionsProcessorStep also uses index 0. Matches the image slice above.
+                state = state[:, 0, :]
             inputs["state"] = (state.unsqueeze(1) if state.ndim == 2 else state).float()  # [B, 1, dim]
 
         return inputs