The majority of the time, when I need to get data that is stored in the database, depending on the situation, I tend to stick to database queries as they are more flexible. You could use the following: $db = JFactory::getDbo(); $query = $db->getQuery(true); $query->select($db->quoteName(array('title'))) ->from($db->quoteName('#__categories')) ->where($db->quoteName('parent_id') . ' = 1') ->where($db->quoteName('extension') . ' = ' . $db->quote('com_content')); $db->setQuery($query); $rows = $db->loadObjectList(); foreach ($rows as $row) { echo '<p>' . $row->title . '</p>'; } As you can see, the `parent_id` must be `1` and the categories must belong to `com_content` (to prevent pulling categories from the likes of `com_weblinks` etc). I've added in a little `foreach` loop to display the title of the category for each result. Hope this helps