Hail is regularly observed in Belgium and is sometimes the cause of severe damage on e.g. crops, greenhouses, roofs and cars. Most severe hail events occur in summer and are associated with intense thunderstorms producing large hail stones. Hail is a very local phenomenon, in time and space, which cannot be easily detected with ground observational networks. Remote sensing instruments appear therefore as valuable tools for the real-time detection of hail thunderstorms on a wide spatial coverage and with a relatively fine spatial and time resolution. The Royal Meteorological Institute of Belgium (RMI) operates a C-band Weather Radar and a SAFIR lightning detection system. A hail detection algorithm based on volumic radar data has been recently implemented at RMI and tested on several reported hail cases. In the present study we investigate the potential contribution of the lightning detection system to the nowcasting of hail thunderstorms. SAFIR data will be compared to radar data for different observed hail cases and we will investigate how SAFIR data can improve the tracking of hail thunderstorms. The paper is organized as follows. In section 2 we describe SAFIR and radar data and the radar-based hail detection product as well. Comparisons between SAFIR and radar data for different observed hail episodes are shown in section 3. Complementarities between the two observational systems are discussed in section 4. Finally, conclusions are given in section 5.