Ronquières: has Flemish rising star Pommelien Thijs won over Wallonia's festival crowd?
The set is being read less as a routine festival highlight than as a data point about whether Belgium's linguistic divide is loosening for a younger, streaming-native generation.
In 30 seconds
- Pommelien Thijs, a Dutch-singing Flemish pop act, performed at the Ronquières festival in Hainaut, Wallonia, and won over the French-speaking crowd, according to RTBF.
- RTBF's culture desk described the set as an "opération séduction réussie" — a successful charm offensive.
- The Ronquières festival is held annually at the Plan incliné near Braine-le-Comte, historically with francophone and international line-ups.
- North-to-south crossovers — Flemish artists winning Walloon audiences — are far rarer than francophone acts such as Angèle breaking through in Flanders.
Pommelien Thijs is a young Flemish (Dutch-speaking Belgian) singer-songwriter and actor who gained prominence through the Flemish streaming series wtFOCK and has become one of Flanders' most-streamed pop acts, performing mainly in Dutch. The Ronquières festival is an annual music festival held at the Plan incliné de Ronquières near Braine-le-Comte in Hainaut, Wallonia, with a traditionally francophone and international line-up. RTBF is Wallonia's French-language public broadcaster; VRT is its Dutch-language Flemish counterpart. The story turns on Thijs winning over a French-speaking Walloon audience despite singing in Dutch, a north-to-south cultural crossover that is unusual in linguistically divided Belgium.
Background
Belgium's Dutch- and French-speaking communities have run largely separate cultural and media ecosystems since the country's federalisation, with VRT serving Flanders and RTBF serving Wallonia and audiences rarely overlapping. Musical crossovers have historically flowed south-to-north through French — Stromae and later Angèle reached Flemish listeners — while Dutch-language acts have struggled to travel the other way, making a Flemish singer winning a Walloon crowd the harder and rarer feat.
What to do
For Belgian festival-goers, it points to more linguistically mixed line-ups; for artists and bookers, it suggests audiences — especially younger ones — increasingly follow music across the language border rather than within it.
Impact
Regional — For Wallonia, and Hainaut in particular, the Ronquières festival is a marquee summer event, and a successful Dutch-language headline slot signals that Walloon programmers and audiences are increasingly open to Flemish acts — potentially widening future line-ups and cross-community bookings.
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- 9 Aug 2026
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This story was assembled from verified evidence, with its sources and reasoning recorded as it was written.