Why are more couples marrying again in Flanders and Brussels?
The aantal huwelijken in Belgium rose again in 2024, with Statbel counting 48,589 marriages nationwide. The increase was strongest in Vlaanderen, where 27,147 marriages were registered, while Brussel also rose to 4,427. VRT NWS framed the Flemish and Brussels figures as a nieuw record and asked naar de redenen waarom meer people are choosing marriage. The most plausible answer is not one single romantic revival, but a mix of delayed post-Covid weddings, legal certainty, migration and international-family paperwork, housing and inheritance planning, a weaker appeal of new legal cohabitation declarations, and the fact that couples are marrying later after longer periods of cohabitation.
Verified by Validiris·📚 5 sources·🧠 AI-checked·🇧🇪 Belgian: HighWhy you can trust this
About this story
This is a Belgian social-demographic story, centred on Flanders and the Brussels-Capital Region rather than on EU politics. The main actors are couples making household decisions, municipal civil registrars, Statbel, notaries, wedding-sector businesses, and Brussels communes that serve many international residents. For expats and EU-institution staff in Brussels, marriage is also a cross-border legal status: it can affect residence files, family reunification, tax and inheritance planning, parental recognition and the recognition of a partnership abroad.
How to read this story
The history
Belgium’s partnership landscape has changed sharply over the past generation. Legal cohabitation has been available since 2000 and same-sex marriage since 2003, making Belgium an early European mover on recognised family forms. Eurostat’s broader view is that marriage rates across the EU have fallen steeply since the 1960s, while registered partnerships and non-marital family forms have become more common. The Belgian rebound therefore does not mean a return to older marriage patterns; it suggests that marriage is being chosen later, more selectively and often for concrete legal reasons.
Regional impact
The strongest rise is in the Flemish Region, where Statbel recorded 27,147 marriages in 2024, up 6.7% from 2023. Brussels-Capital reached 4,427, up 3.1%. In practical terms, this affects municipal administrations, wedding venues, photographers, catering firms and notaries in both regions. Brussels has a particular profile because many couples are binational or internationally mobile, which makes recognition of Belgian marital status outside Belgium more important than in a purely local family story.
Local impact
In Brussels, the trend intersects with the city’s international population. EU staff, diplomats, mobile workers and binational couples may prefer marriage because it is easier to explain to foreign administrations than Belgium’s legal cohabitation status. In Flanders, the larger numerical rise matters for local town halls and wedding-sector planning.
International angle
The Belgian trend contrasts with the long-term EU pattern of lower marriage rates and more diverse family forms. Eurostat’s 2024 update estimates 1.7 million marriages across the EU and warns that marriage data alone are no longer enough to understand family formation.
What this means for you
Couples in Belgium should compare marriage, legal cohabitation and factual cohabitation before choosing a status. The practical checklist is property ownership, children, inheritance, pension or survivor rights, residence status, tax consequences and whether another country will recognise the relationship.
Opposing perspectives
- Statbel and municipal-administration view
The official Belgian framing is cautious: Statbel reports registrations, regional increases and partner characteristics, but does not claim a cultural return to traditional marriage. From this perspective, the headline record is mainly an administrative and demographic signal. Municipalities in Vlaanderen and Brussel would read it through workload, civil registry planning, popular wedding dates and the management of bilingual or international paperwork.
- Eurostat demographic view
Eurostat’s EU-side framing is broader and less celebratory. It stresses that marriage and divorce data alone no longer describe family formation, because registered partnerships, legal cohabitation and non-marital parenthood differ across Member States. In that view, Belgium’s rise in marriages sits inside a Europe where marriage rates remain far below the 1960s and where legal alternatives have become normal.
- Couples and notarial-practical view
For many couples, especially homeowners, blended families and mixed-nationality partners in Brussels, marriage can be a practical legal choice rather than a symbolic rejection of cohabitation. The Belgian debate differs from Anglo-style culture-war framing: the key issue is often legal certainty over property, inheritance, parental recognition and cross-border paperwork, not whether society is becoming more or less conservative.
Related to this story
Pulse Insight — This topic connects to 10 associations, 3 funding programmes, 97 upcoming events and 848 jobs through the Brussels ecosystem.
Live connections from the Belgium Impulse ecosystem — not recommendations.
This briefing was prepared with AI assistance and reviewed by a Belgium Impulse editor before publication. methodology.