Information on soil attributes displayed on general soil maps and cartograms can be helpful to characterize the water regime of soils, for wide ranges of applications. The soil water retention capacity characterises the water movement in the soil very well. Our studies aimed to analyse the possibilities and reliability of soil water retention capacity estimations based on information stored in 1:10 000 scale soil maps and cartograms in Hungary. To achieve these aims, the database on soil properties of the Hungarian Soil Information System (data on 1023 soil profiles, containing measured water holding data for 3115 layers) have been first analysed. In the statistical analysis we included the soil parameter categories according to soil types; soil texture; organic matter codes; calcium carbonate codes and the measured soil water retention values (pF 0; pF 2,5; pF 4,2; pF 6;2). We studied the possibility of the pF curve estimation (pF point estimation and pF function estimation according to Brutsaert and van Genuchten) on the basis of the grouped means calculated from the categorized soil characteristics of soil maps.