The control of the formation process during and after self-assembly is of utmost importance to achieve well structured, controlled template-assisted mesoporous titania materials with the desired properties for various applications via the evaporation induced self-assembly method (EISA). The present paper reports on the large influence of the thermal stabilization and successive template removal on the pore structure of a mesostructured TiO2 material using the diblock copolymer Brij 58 as surfactant. A controlled thermal stabilization (temperature and duration) allows one to tailor the final pore size and uniformity much more precise by influencing the self-assembly of the template. Moreover, also the successive thermal template removal needs to be controlled in order to avoid a structural collapse. N-2-sorption, TGA, TEM, FT-Raman spectroscopy, and small angle & wide angle XRD have been used to follow the crystal growth and mesostructure organization after thermal stabilization and after thermal template removal, revealing its effect on the final pore structure. (C) 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.