This contribution deals with an adaptive sliding mode control for a hybrid actuator consisting of a piezo, a mechanicacal and a hydraulic part that can be used for camless engine motor applications. The control structure comprises a feedforward controller and a sliding mode controller. The general approach of this actuator is to use the advantages of both systems, the high precision of the piezoelectric actuator and the force of the hydraulic part. In fact, piezoelectric actuators (PEAs) are commonly used for precise positioning, despite PEAs present nonlinearities, such as hysteresis, saturations, and creep. A sliding mode control is proposed and for deriving the structure of such a controller a Lyapunov approach is used. An adaptive self-tuning algorithm is realised. The conceived sliding mode control takes the hydraulic actuator in a resonance operating point which corresponds to the rotational speed of the engine. When the engine speed changes, the sliding mode controller adapts its parameter in away that the resonance frequency of the controlled hydraulic part of the actuator changes and corresponds to the working frequency of the engine. The resulting controller is therefor totally self-tuning and robust with respect to the model parameter variation. Asymptotic tracking is shown using Lyapunov approach. Moreover, the proposed technique avoids a switching function for the calculation of the equivalent signal of the sliding mode controller. In this way the chattering problem is completely avoided. Simulations with real data of a camless engine are presented.