New Year's Eve 2026: questions and answers

Your municipality decides. Belgium has no nationwide ban, but the Brussels-Capital Region bans fireworks on its whole territory, Ghent only allows them on New Year's night between midnight and 1 a.m., and Bruges and Mechelen banned them on New Year's night too at the end of 2025. In the Flemish provincial capitals they are as a rule only allowed at organised shows. The rules change every year: look up your municipality's police regulation.

At a public show. Cities and organisers put on fireworks, drone or light shows and countdowns. Our list has every public show we know of, by city.

In Brussels everywhere, on private and public ground. In other municipalities it differs from year to year: Ghent restricts fireworks and possessing them in public space, and in the five Flemish provincial capitals they are as a rule banned outside organised shows. What exactly applies where is in your municipality's police regulation.

It differs from year to year and from operator to operator. Check that night's timetable in the app of NMBS/SNCB, De Lijn or, in Brussels, MIVB/STIB beforehand.

In early January. The best known is the one on the beach of Ostend, usually on a Saturday in the first days of January; other coastal towns have a dive too. The dives we know of are on the New Year's dive page.

A show in which a comedian or cabaret artist looks back on the year, a tradition that is on television in Flanders too. Many artists play their year-end show in theatres in November and December.

Many orchestras play a New Year's concert around the turn of the year, for example the Antwerp Symphony Orchestra in the Queen Elisabeth Hall and the Belgian National Orchestra at Bozar. The concerts we know of are with the parties and concerts.