International, relevant to the Netherlands

Copernicus Sentinel-2

The Sentinel-2 satellites image the whole of the Netherlands every few days, in thirteen spectral bands. Detail: 10 metres per pixel.

Earth observation Climate and environment Housing and landAccountSatellite imageAPIWorld · 10 metres

Up to date · updated 2 days ago · checked 17:05

Amsterdam at 10 metres per pixel

Cloud-free mosaic of 2016 Sentinel-2 images. The canal ring, the IJ and Vondelpark are recognisable, individual cars are not. The newest image over Amsterdam is from 13 October 2026.

Source: Sentinel-2 cloudless door EOX (s2maps.eu), Copernicus-data 2016, CC BY 4.0

What can you do with it?3 ideas

Getting started

Before and after

Find two cloud-free images of the same place, years apart. New housing, deforestation and sand nourishment stand out.

Advanced

How green is your neighbourhood?

Compute NDVI from the red and near-infrared bands (B4 and B8) and average per neighbourhood.

Advanced

Seeing drought

Track pasture NDVI through the summer and compare a dry year with a wet one.

How to process it4 steps

Search the catalogue
Use STAC with a bounding box, a period and a maximum cloud cover.
Fetch only what you need
Images are Cloud Optimized GeoTIFFs: you can read one band and one window without downloading the whole tile.
Choose the right bands
True colour: B4, B3, B2. Vegetation: B8 and B4. Water: B3 and B8.
Mask the clouds
The scene classification (SCL) says per pixel whether it's cloud, shadow, water or land.

Interesting combinations

geometrie

Greenery per neighbourhood

Clip the NDVI per neighbourhood boundary and average.

Combine with District and neighbourhood map

coördinaten

Is it green or built-up?

WorldCover gives a ready-made classification from the same satellites.

Combine with ESA WorldCover

Similar sources

NASA GIBS and Worldview
Coarser, but daily and as a ready-made image.
S
Satellietdataportaal (NSO) not in the index yet
Commercial imagery down to 30 cm, free for Dutch users.
LP
Luchtfoto's PDOK not in the index yet
Aerial photos of the whole country at 8 to 25 cm, once a year.

What to watch out for

Clouds
Many images over the Netherlands are (partly) cloudy. Filter by cloud cover or use a mosaic.
Large files
One tile covers 110 by 110 km and is hundreds of megabytes. Request only the area and bands you need.
Account needed to download
Searching the catalogue (STAC) works without an account; downloading via the Copernicus Data Space requires a free account.
Mind the licence of mosaics
Raw Copernicus data is free. EOX mosaics after 2016 are for non-commercial use only.

APISTAC 1.1.0 · read 15 Oct 2026

StandardSTAC 1.1.0docs

Access no key

Searching is anonymous. The files themselves require s3 (s3) or oidc (openIdConnect) (stated in the collection). from the description

Formats

GeoJSON (zoekresultaten)JPEG 2000XML

Base URL

https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1

Endpoints 3

GET/collections/sentinel-2-l2a/itemsscenes in this collection, with bbox, datetime, limit
GET/POST/searchsearch across collections, with filter (CQL2), sortby and fields
GET/collections/sentinel-2-l2a/queryablesfilterable fields

Filtering from the description

CQL2 (text or JSON) on the queryables

iddatetimegeometryplatformgrid:codepublishedproduct:typeeo:snow_covereo:cloud_coversat:orbit_stateprocessing:versionsat:relative_orbit

Parameters 6

`bbox`	lon/lat box: west,south,east,north	platform
`datetime`	date or period, e.g. 2026-06-01/2026-08-31	platform
`limit`	per page; next via link rel=next	platform
`sortby`	sorting, e.g. -datetime (newest first)	from the description
`filter`	CQL2 filter on the queryables, e.g. eo:cloud_cover < 10	from the description
`fields`	return only these fields	from the description

Bands 12

Name	Type	Meaning
`B01` coastal	60 m	Coastal aerosol (band 1)
`B02` blue	10 m	Blue (band 2)
`B03` green	10 m	Green (band 3)
`B04` red	10 m	Red (band 4)
`B05` rededge071	20 m	Red edge 1 (band 5)
`B06` rededge075	20 m	Red edge 2 (band 6)
`B07` rededge078	20 m	Red edge 3 (band 7)
`B08` nir	10 m	NIR 1 (band 8)
`B8A` nir08	20 m	NIR 2 (band 8A)
`B09` nir09	60 m	NIR 3 (band 9)
`B11` swir16	20 m	SWIR 1 (band 11)
`B12` swir22	20 m	SWIR 2 (band 12)

Limits and pitfalls

You can search without an account, including on cloud cover (eo:cloud_cover). Downloading the bands needs a free account. experience

Try it HTTP 200 · 1,395 ms · 15 Oct

https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1/collections/sentinel-2-l2a/items?bbox=4.7,52.2,5.1,52.5&sortby=-datetime&limit=1&fields=id,properties.datetime,properties.eo:cloud_cover

{
  "type": "FeatureCollection",
  "links": [
    {
      "rel": "collection",
      "type": "application/json",
      "href": "https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1/collections/sentinel-2-l2a"
    },
    {
      "rel": "parent",
      "type": "application/json",
      "href": "https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1/collections/sentinel-2-l2a"
    }
  ],
  "features": [
    {
      "properties": {
        "datetime": "2026-10-13T10:40:01.025000Z",
        "eo:cloud_cover": 99.41
      },
      "id": "S2C_MSIL2A_20261013T104001_N0513_R008_T31UFU_20261013T135612",
      "links": [
        {
          "rel": "collection",
          "type": "application/json",
          "href": "https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1/collections/sentinel-2-l2a"
        },
        {
          "rel": "parent",
          "type": "application/json",
          "href": "https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1/collections/sentinel-2-l2a"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "numberReturned": 1
}

Shortened response, saved at harvest time. Click the URL for the real, current response.

Read from collection: bands, coverage, licence, access · fields you can filter on · what the search API supports (conformsTo). Labels: from the description stated in what the api itself publishes. tested from our own small call. platform applies to every api on this platform, per its documentation. experience learned while building bronwijzer.

How to fetch it

curl "https://stac.dataspace.copernicus.eu/v1/collections/sentinel-2-l2a/items?bbox=4.7,52.2,5.1,52.5&sortby=-datetime&limit=1"

Used by

Copernicus BrowserSearch and view images in the browser
SatellietdataportaalSatellite images of the Netherlands, by the Netherlands Space Office
Sentinel-2 cloudlessCloud-free annual mosaics by EOX

Questions this source helps answer

What does my area look like from space?3 sources