How to Film in Belgium — Permits, Locations & Production Tips

By Virgile Demoustier, FAB FIXERS | Updated March 2026

Belgium is one of Western Europe's most underrated filming destinations — and one of its most misunderstood. International crews tend to arrive expecting a straightforward, English-friendly shoot in a compact country. That part is true. What surprises them is the administrative complexity that comes with Belgium's unique political structure: three official languages, three regions with different authorities, and a capital city that functions simultaneously as a Belgian municipality, a European capital, and a NATO seat.

Get it right and Belgium is a dream: extraordinary locations, skilled multilingual crew, a welcoming film culture, and none of the logistical battle that comes with Paris. Get it wrong and you're losing days to permit confusion in a country where nobody is quite sure which authority is responsible for what.

I've been based between Paris and Brussels since 2014, working with international crews across both countries. This is everything I know about filming in Belgium without losing time you don't have.

Understanding Belgium's regional structure — why it matters for permits

Belgium is not a simple country to navigate administratively. It is a federal state divided into three regions — the Brussels-Capital Region, the Flemish Region (Flanders, Dutch-speaking), and the Walloon Region (Wallonia, French-speaking) — plus three linguistic communities that operate separately. Each region has its own film commission, its own permit authorities, and its own administrative culture.

In practice, this means the person who issues your filming permit in Ghent speaks Dutch and processes applications through Flanders' regional system, while the person who issues your permit in Liège speaks French and works through a completely different Wallonian structure, and your Brussels permits go through the Brussels-Capital Region's municipality system. A fixer who knows France but not Belgium cannot navigate this — it requires genuinely local knowledge of all three systems.

Brussels-Capital Region

Brussels filming permits are issued at the municipal level through individual commune authorities — there are 19 communes in the Brussels-Capital Region, each with its own process. For shoots in public spaces across multiple communes in a single day, you may need multiple permit applications running simultaneously. Screen.brussels — the Brussels film commission — serves as a coordination point and first contact for international productions.

For shoots near EU institutions (the European Parliament, the European Commission, the Council of the EU, NATO headquarters), additional security protocols apply. Access to institutional buildings for filming requires direct accreditation through each institution's press and communications department. FAB FIXERS has experience coordinating EU and NATO shoots and knows the right contacts.

Flanders

Flanders operates through a more centralised structure. Film Commission Flanders (Flanders Image) is your primary point of contact for shoots across the region, and can facilitate coordination with local authorities in Antwerp, Ghent, Bruges, and across the Flemish countryside. Permits in major Flemish cities are generally efficient — Ghent and Bruges in particular have well-established film-friendly processes from years of production activity.

Wallonia

Wallonia covers the southern half of Belgium — Liège, Namur, the Ardennes, and the area around Mons and Charleroi. Wallimage, the regional film commission for Wallonia, is your first contact. Permits in Wallonia's smaller municipalities can take longer than Brussels or Flanders and benefit significantly from a local fixer with existing relationships.

What permits do you actually need in Belgium?

The good news: Belgium's permitting system is genuinely more accessible than France's. For small crews on public streets in most municipalities, a simple notification to the local police — sometimes just by email — is sufficient. No AGATE-equivalent system, no mandatory insurance submission upfront, no signed charters.

The full picture is more nuanced:

For any shoot that affects traffic, closes streets, uses vehicles as props, requires parking exemptions, or involves more than a small crew in a public space, a formal permit from the relevant commune or municipal authority is required. Processing times vary from 48 hours in Brussels for simple requests to two weeks or more in smaller municipalities.

For shoots on private property — historic buildings, chateaux, private estates — direct negotiation with owners is required, and most historic properties of significance have their own permissions process for audiovisual work.

For shoots at official Belgian landmarks — the Atomium, the Manneken Pis and its immediate surrounds, the Grand-Place in Brussels — specific authorisations apply. The Grand-Place in particular is a UNESCO World Heritage Site with its own filming protocols managed by the City of Brussels.

For EU institutional locations, each institution manages its own media accreditation separately. Filming inside or immediately outside the European Parliament, the Berlaymont building (European Commission), or NATO headquarters requires institutional press accreditation and often significant lead time.

Insurance

Belgian filming permits at the municipal level typically require proof of civil liability insurance. The standard minimum is €2.5M, though requirements vary by location and production scale. Ensure your policy explicitly covers Belgium — some international policies default to France or the UK as the primary coverage territory and require an endorsement for Belgium.

Work permits and crew

For productions shooting fewer than 21 days in Belgium, non-EEA crew members generally do not require a formal work permit, but must declare their professional activities. EEA citizens work freely. For longer productions, Belgian social security declarations apply. FAB FIXERS manages all crew compliance paperwork for international productions.

Belgium's locations — what international crews actually come here to film

Brussels

The EU quarter is one of the most filmed political districts in the world outside Washington and Westminster — and for good reason. The juxtaposition of the European Parliament's glass and steel against Brussels' Art Nouveau residential streets creates a visual language that is instantly readable to international audiences as "European politics." The Rue de la Loi, the Schuman roundabout, and the Berlaymont building's distinctive curved facade are as visually codified for EU coverage as the White House lawn is for American political coverage.

Beyond the institutions: the Grand-Place is among the most beautiful medieval squares in Europe, the Galeries Royales Saint-Hubert are the world's oldest shopping arcades, the Atomium is one of the most distinctive structures in the world, and the Art Nouveau architecture of Ixelles and Saint-Gilles is virtually unfilmed by international crews despite being extraordinary.

Bruges

Bruges is Belgium's most filmable city after Brussels — a perfectly preserved medieval canal city that has appeared in dozens of international productions, most famously In Bruges (2008) and the Tim Burton-produced Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (2016). The city's permit process is efficient and the film commission is experienced in handling international crews. The Markt and the Belfry, the canal belt, and the Begijnhof are all accessible to filming with advance planning.

Ghent

Ghent is Bruges' less-visited, slightly grittier equivalent — more authentic, more diverse, increasingly popular with documentary crews who want medieval Belgium without the tourist density of Bruges. The Gravensteen castle, the Graslei and Korenlei canal frontage, and Sint-Baafskathedraal (home to the Van Eyck Ghent Altarpiece) are landmark filming locations.

Antwerp

Belgium's second city and its fashion and diamond capital. The historic port, the Cathedral of Our Lady, the Rubenshuis, and the extraordinary Central Station — described as a "railway cathedral" — make Antwerp one of Europe's most architecturally rich filming cities. Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children was largely filmed here.

The Ardennes

Southern Belgium's forested highlands are one of Europe's most evocative landscapes for war documentary, outdoor, and adventure content — and among the least filmed by international crews. The Battle of the Bulge was fought here in 1944; Bastogne and its memorial sites are among the most important WWII locations in Europe. Miranda Castle in Namur — used in the TV series Hannibal — is one of the most extraordinary neo-Gothic structures in the world, now in planned restoration.

The Flanders Fields

The WWI battlefields of Ypres (Ieper) and the surrounding West Flanders countryside are among the most significant historical filming locations in Europe. Tyne Cot Cemetery, the Menin Gate, and the In Flanders Fields Museum in Ypres draw documentary crews from around the world. Permit coordination for cemetery and memorial shoots involves the Commonwealth War Graves Commission alongside local authorities.

Practical tips for international crews in Belgium

Belgium is small — Bruges to Brussels is 54 minutes by train, Brussels to Liège is 55 minutes, Brussels to Ghent is 32 minutes. Multi-city shoots that would require overnight logistics in France or Germany can often be done as day trips from a Brussels base. This dramatically simplifies logistics for multi-location productions.

Belgian crew speak English. Virtually all professional crew in Brussels, Antwerp, and Ghent are fluent in English — often alongside French, Dutch, and German. The need for a fixer as translator is lower than in France or Southern Europe. The need for a fixer as permit navigator and institutional contact is higher.

Equipment rental in Belgium is centred in Brussels and Antwerp. For productions based in Ghent, Bruges, or Liège, Brussels is the logistics hub. FAB FIXERS coordinates all equipment sourcing and logistics from our Brussels base.

Why FAB FIXERS for Belgium

FAB FIXERS is the only fixer company with dedicated hubs in both Paris and Brussels. Virgile Demoustier has lived and worked in Brussels and knows the Belgian production landscape — the three regional systems, the EU institutional contacts, the local crew network — from direct experience, not from a directory.

Our Brussels hub means we can support productions that span both France and Belgium without the logistical complexity of coordinating two separate fixers across two countries. For international productions with shoots in Paris and Brussels on the same trip — common for EU and political coverage — FAB FIXERS is the only natural choice.

📞 +33 6 22 99 43 50 | virgile@fabfixers.com | fabfixers.com/contact