More than 450 artisanal cheeses have been identified in Belgium during a survey, including some typical products, like Maquée, Herve or Abbaye. Microbial communities vary between types of cheeses. Cheese microflora can originate from raw milk, production and ripening environments, or intentionally added starters1. Moreover, cheese cores and crusts generally represent two distinct ecosystems. Internally, anaerobic lactic acid bacteria are generally found, while an increased microbial diversity is observed on cheese surface, where oxygenation allows the growth of bacteria, yeasts and molds1. Microbial communities of cheeses are thus extremely complex. The main goal of this study was to characterize the bacterial diversity of Belgian artisanal cheeses. Twenty-six artisanal cheeses, including unripened, soft and semi-soft cheeses, were studied in triplicate. Samples were collected in 26 farms directly after production or after ripening, for unripened and ripened cheeses, respectively. After DNA extraction and amplification of regions V1-V3 of the gene coding for bacterial 16S rRNA, DNA was sequenced using Illumina MiSeq technology. Obtained sequences were grouped into operational taxonomic units (OTUs) by phylotype at the species level, using Mothur2. Conserving 10,000 sequences for each sample, 3,201 OTUs have been identified. These OTUs belong to five major phyla. At a deeper taxonomic level, only 16 genera represent more than 0.1 % of the sequences in at least one type of cheese. α- and β-diversity were also studied and compared between types of cheese.