The HBED chelator is used to stabilize small and hard metal ions such as Fe3+, Ti4+, Ga3+ and Al3+ in both medicine and industry. While the coordination of hexadentate HBED4− is known in the case of Fe3+, Ti4+ and Ga3+, it is unknown in the case of the small Al3+ ion since its corresponding complex has never been fully characterized. Thus, in this work the coordination pattern in a newly synthesized aluminum HBED-based complex ([Al–HBED–NN]−Na+) was determined using 2D NMR in conjunction with DFT calculations.