Belgium united at Cinquantenaire
On July 21, 2026, Brussels celebrated Belgian National Day with a new edition of the Belgium Party. Held in the heart of Parc du Cinquantenaire, this popular event has established itself, for the fifth consecutive year, as the major closing rendezvous of the national festivities.
Against the monumental backdrop of the Cinquantenaire arcades, concerts, visuals, lasers, drones and pyrotechnics followed one another to create an evening that reflected Belgium: festive, diverse and unifying.
A stage bringing together Belgian artists
From 9:00 PM, the Belgium Party brought fourteen artists on stage from the different communities and generations of the Belgian music scene.
TeddyBear, Natalia, Tourist LeMC, Ghinzu, Kaat Van Stralen, MAKSIM, Milk Inc., Camille Yembe, Pierre de Maere, Omdat Het Kan & Average Rob, Hamza, Zap Mama, K.ZIA and Netsky delivered a concert blending pop, electro, hip-hop, rock and urban music.
Beyond the musical performances, several sequences paid tribute to the personalities and events that have marked Belgium, including forty years since Sandra Kim’s Eurovision victory, the centenary of SNCB, forty years of the Six Days of Antwerp, and thirty years of Brussels Pride.
This deliberately open and intergenerational programme illustrates the ambition of the Belgium Party: to bring the country’s different cultures together around a shared celebration.
The royal family at the heart of the celebration
King Philippe and Queen Mathilde attended the evening alongside their four children: Princess Elisabeth, Prince Gabriel, Prince Emmanuel and Princess Eléonore.
Their presence at Cinquantenaire extended a day punctuated by official ceremonies, the traditional Te Deum, and the military and civil parade held in front of the Royal Palace.
In front of the royal family and an exceptional crowd, the evening took on both a popular and an institutional dimension, bringing together in one place the symbols of the monarchy, the country’s artists and an audience from all regions of Belgium.
A show unfolding from the stage to the sky
From 10:30 PM, the concert gave way to a major multimedia finale driven by a Netsky DJ set. A ballet of 350 drones, accompanied by lasers and monumental lighting, took over the sky and the Cinquantenaire architecture.
At 11:00 PM, ARTEVENTIA concluded the evening with a pyrotechnic creation designed especially for this celebration. Conceived as the final movement of the show, the fireworks extended the energy of the music while interacting with the laser beams and the site’s monumental lines.
In this emblematic setting, pyrotechnics are not merely a grand finale: they become a true visual language, capable of extending the collective emotion and giving a spectacular dimension to the final minutes of the event.
A historic public success
According to the Brussels-Capital–Ixelles police zone, nearly 150,000 spectators attended Belgium Party 2026. A record turnout that confirms the event’s place among the country’s largest free celebrations.
The evening also benefited from extensive television coverage on RTBF La Une, VRT 1 and BRF, as well as on TV5 Monde and Proximus Showcase, allowing the show to shine far beyond Parc du Cinquantenaire.
This 2026 edition will be remembered as an immense public success, organised without any major incident and supported by remarkable coordination between the organisers, the artists, the technical teams and the public services mobilised.
By delivering the pyrotechnic finale of this major national celebration, ARTEVENTIA once again places its expertise at the heart of a major international event, in front of one of Brussels’ most emblematic monuments.
Photo credits: Frédéric Lepla and Arthur Lepla
