To understand low- to intermediate-mass star-formation in the nearby R CrA molecular cloud, we try to identify the stellar content that is accessible with near-infrared observations. We obtained a JHKs band mosaic of ~10'x60' covering the entire R CrA molecular cloud with unprecedented sensitivity. We present a catalogue of about 3500 near-infrared sources fainter than the saturation limit Ks~10mag, reaching Ks~18mag. We analysed the extended sources by inspecting their morphology and point sources by means of colour-colour and colour-magnitude diagrams. Additionally, we compared the extinction inferred from the NIR data with the line-of-sight dust emission at 1.2mm. Sources towards high dust emission but relatively low H-Ks show a projected mm-excess; these sources are either immediately surrounded by cold circumstellar material or, if too red to be a true foreground object, they are embedded in the front layer of the 1.2mm emitting dust cloud. In both cases they are most likely associated with the cloud.