We use the theory of Uq-tilting modules to construct cellular bases for centralizer algebras. Our methods are quite general and work for any quantum group Uq attached to a Cartan matrix and include the non semi-simple cases for q being a root of unity and ground fields of positive characteristic. Our approach also generalize to certain categories containing infinite dimensional modules. As an application, we recover several known cellular structures (which can all be fit into our general set-up) as we illustrate in a list of examples.