Over the past ten years technologies for generating, maintaining and using 3D geo-information have matured. For national mapping agencies one of the challenges is how to best extend 2D data into 3D data, making best use of research results and available technologies. Some mapping organisations are making serious progress. The question addressed in this paper is how research results achieved in the past ten years are applied in practice and what research problems remain. In addition, the paper explores the potentials of the OGC 3D standard (i.e. CityGML) for 3D national mapping and what developments are further required to make the standard better fit for this purpose. The main conclusions of the paper are that 3D data is more and more available but still suffers from a low level of usage (mainly visualisation) and standards and formats based on CityGML have been stabilised although software support is still in the early stage. Several recommendations are made to meet these problems, including the definition of European CityGML profiles (as the INSPIRE Building profile) to harmonise 3D needs and standardise 3D implementations at international level.