After a short historical review of base cartography in Belgium, one cans observe that the new regional structures, which resulted from the constitutional reforms during the 1970s and 80s, have redrawn the landscape of base cartography production in this country. Different national and regional authorities are presently involved in base cartography. They propose solutions for basic reference cartography, either on an average scale or on a large-scale. Raster maps are often used as a temporary solution, while awaiting a vectorial version, or as a complement to the vectorial digital maps. Authorities will have to provide in the future adequate solutions for the problem of the updating of the enormous databases and for distributing and using these data.