Mesoporous ceria materials (CeO2-meso) have been prepared through a soft-templating method using cetyltrimethylammonium bromide as a template and cerium nitrate as a precursor. The synthesized CeO2-meso materials possess narrow pore size distributions of 5.1-5.4 nm and tunable surface areas (109-182 m(2) g(-1)). As heterogeneous catalysts in the transesterification of ethylene carbonate (EC) with methanol to dimethyl carbonate (DMC), CeO2-meso materials demonstrate superior catalytic performance to the commercial ceria. N-2 adsorption-desorption and CO2-TPD characterization results indicate that the catalytic activity obtained over various CeO2-meso samples depends on their surface areas and basicity. The highest activity is achieved over CeO2-meso-400, affording a DMC yield as much as 73.3%, together with excellent recycling ability. Besides the transesterification of EC with methanol, CeO2-meso is found to be able to catalyze the reactions of other cyclic carbonates and alcohols. In view of the high catalytic performance along with the convenience in catalyst preparation, CeO2-meso-400 compares favorably with the ionic liquids as well as other ceria-based catalytic systems. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.