Pléiades was originally set up as the optical component of the Franco-Italian ORFEO programme (the radar component being COSMO-SkyMed). Several other European countries participated in the Pléiades programme alongside France and Italy — including Austria, Spain, Sweden and Belgium.

Belgium’s participation was a continuation of its long-standing cooperation with France in the SPOT programme and covered 4% of the overall cost of Pléiades. This enabled Belgian institutional users to benefit from privileged access to both new and archived Pléiades imagery between 2013 and the end of 2024.

Although the French–Belgian cooperation ended on 31 December 2024, all data acquired via this portal under the programme remain available to registered users . Authorised institutional users can consult and download the archived data via the Geo Search section. The archive therefore continues to provide a valuable resource for research, policy support and operational applications requiring very high-resolution optical imagery.

Over the course of 2013, the Belgian federal and regional authorities joined forces to acquire a full coverage of Belgium in Pléiades images. These images have been uploaded to the Geo Search, and are now available for all authorised users.

Airbus D&S has kept acquiring (partial) yearly coverages of Belgium since that first fruitful endeavour in 2013. For an overview of all the images acquired over Belgium since 2014, be sure to check out this Google Earth file. Please note that all of these images are available in the Airbus D&S archive.

Although the Pléiades4Belgium acquisition scheme ended on 31 December 2024, Pléiades imagery can still be obtained through other channels. Commercial users and public administrations can purchase Pléiades imagery directly from the Airbus Defence and Space Geostore.

Belgian research institutes conducting non-commercial projects may request data via the DINAMIS platform, coordinated by the French space agency CNES.

More information on the DINAMIS offer