The institutionalisation of national forest monitoring systems (NFMS) is crucial for streamlined, sustainable and transparent use of forest data, which informs forest policies and management. This FAO webinar highlighted the ways in which a legal basis, financial commitment and a permanent institutional framework are vital to ensuring efficient implementation and operation of an NFMS. It also launched the FAO publication “Institutionalisation of forest data: Establishing legal frameworks for sustainable forest monitoring in REDD+ countries,” created within the framework of the UN-REDD Programme. During the webinar, representatives from Colombia and Uganda shared experiences and lessons learned from institutionalization of forest data. The project also shared the CBIT-Forest project’s one-year in numbers presentation, the information note on legal assessment to set up and operationalized an NFMS (available in English, French and Spanish)and presented an educational video on forests and transparency. The concepts reviewed here drew engagement from the private sector (4% of participants), as well as a considerable amount of female participation (52% of participants).