Abstract Evidence of the association between a personal history of basal cell carcinoma and the risk of non-cutaneous malignancies is conflicting. The aim of this study was to retrospectively clarify the risk of non-cutaneous cancers in individuals with basal cell carcinoma using nationwide Finnish registry data for 96,304 patients and 394,503 randomly selected population controls. In this study, individuals with basal cell carcinoma have an increased risk of other cancers (odds ratio (OR) 1.38; 95% confidence interval (95% CI) 1.36–1.40). The risk was most prominent for lip cancer (OR 5.29; 95% CI 4.50–6.21), mycosis fungoides (OR 3.13; 95% CI 2.31–4.23) and soft tissue cancers (OR 2.77; 95% CI 2.43–3.16). In age-adjusted model, men had higher risk of cancers overall compared with women (p< 0.05). In conclusion, the study found increased overall cancer risk among patients with basal cell carcinoma compared with randomly selected population controls.