On the basis of QTAIM and ELI-D partitioning of position space two-and three-center delocalization indices were calculated for fifteen MB 2 phases with the crystal structure of AlB 2 type. The bonding picture in main-group metal diborides is closest related to graphite with dominant covalent B-B bonding, albeit with lower effective bond order. For MgB 2 an exceptionally large distant electron sharing was found. Transition-metal diborides display smaller effective bond orders B-B but higher effective bond orders TM-B and TM-TM than main-2025 group metal diborides. The large chemical flexibility of this structure type is caused by counterbalancing effects of B-B bonding vs. M-B and M-M bonding. Different three-center fluctuation channels of bonds B-B are found for main-group and transition-metal diborides, namely B-B-B for the former and B-B-M for the latter. With the technique of ELI-D/QTAIM intersection the increasing importance of B 2 Ǟ4M bond charge fluctuations along each row of the periodic table can be recovered already at the topological level of analysis. a) Magnetic; Q eff (X): QTAIM charge of atom X, σ 2 (X): fluctuation of QTAIM basin population of atom X, d ab (X-Y): shortest interatomic distance /Å between atoms X and Y in the crystallographic ab plane, d c (X-Y): shortest interatomic distance /Å between atoms X and Y in c direction, δ ab (X,Y): DI value corresponding to d ab (X-Y), δ c (X,Y): DI value corresponding to d c (X-Y).