Economic report 2026: margins up, profits down, a country split in two

Belgian companies charged more, paid more in wages and earned less in 2025. That is the blunt summary of the 500,419 sets of 2025 annual accounts already filed with the National Bank of Belgium (NBB), which Rovalta combed through as at 8 September 2026. Beneath the average, the country splits in two: half of all companies are growing, the other half are standing still, and around ten large accounts, holding companies first among them, are enough on their own to swing the national result.

This report reads the economy from the ground up: company by company, from the business register kept by the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (KBO/BCE) and from filed accounts, before Statbel and the NBB publish their aggregates. It is written for anyone who needs to benchmark a company, their own or a client’s, against the rest of Belgian business.

Key points

• SME gross margin is up 5% for the second year running, but the wage bill keeps pace at +4.5%. Only one company in two sees its margin rise.
• Combined profit is down 16%. A false signal for SMEs: 52% of companies improved their result. A true signal for around ten large accounts, mostly holding companies: between them they lost €20.8bn, more than the national fall.
• Belgium has never created so many businesses. But they are self-employed people trading in their own name, not companies. Company incorporations are falling.
• Wallonia is the only region where profits are rising. Brussels has the highest shares of loss-making companies and of companies with negative equity.
• Hospitality (horeca) and construction account for four bankruptcies in ten and the worst health scores. Legal services, healthcare and IT are the soundest sectors.

Margins up, profits down

Every set of annual accounts contains the figures for the year and those for the year before, so each company can be compared with itself. Across the 442,476 companies concerned, combined gross margin rose from €91.0bn to €95.7bn. Staff costs rose almost as fast. Combined EBITDA barely moved, up 1.8%, while net profit fell by 16%.

The fall in profit is happening at the top: the ten largest declines add up to €20.8bn, more than the entire national fall. Most are holding companies, whose results follow the timing of the dividends their subsidiaries pass up (Taminco, Titan, Avnet, Nayarit, Sofina), alongside a few large groups: Electrabel still earns €5bn, but €2.85bn less than in 2024, and Carglass, D’Ieteren and KBC Groupe each shed more than €1bn. Take those large accounts out and profit at Belgian SMEs is flat to slightly up: 52% of companies did better than in 2024, and combined cash rose by 3.3%.

Run the same exercise on last year’s accounts, with the same method, and the result is gross margin +5.9% and profit +20%. The 2025 reversal is therefore entirely a reversal in the biggest results, not in the wider business base.

New businesses: the self-employed boom

137,935 businesses still registered today started trading in 2025, a record and 14% more than in 2024. And 2026 is accelerating further: 100,181 business starts from January to August, against 86,613 over the same period of 2025.

But these are not companies. Incorporations of legal entities over the eight months fell by 3.0% (40,008 against 41,227). All of the growth comes from self-employed individuals, whether as a side activity or as their main occupation. The share of companies in new businesses, still 59% in 2019, fell to 48% in 2025 and to 40% in the first months of 2026.

For the accountants, banks and insurers who make a living from company incorporations, the message is clear: the flow of new company clients is flat, while the flow of self-employed people is booming. For policymakers, the ‘entrepreneurial dynamism’ of 2026 is a story of side activities, not of job creation.

Bankruptcies: hospitality and construction

2,738 bankruptcies were published in the register between June and August 2026, around 913 a month, with June including a backlog. Four in ten hit restaurants or construction. Flanders accounts for nearly half, in line with its weight in the business base.

The signal is consistent with the accounts: 34% of restaurant companies are loss-making and 23% have fragile health scores, and accommodation is worse still (45% loss-making). Daily tracking is on the Bankruptcies page.

Wallonia, Flanders, Brussels

Wallonia had the best year: published turnover up 4.5%, combined profit up 5.9%, the only region in positive territory on both. Flanders, which accounts for 64% of filings and €639bn of equity, took the hit from a handful of large groups and their holding companies: combined profit down 18%. The ten largest Flemish declines (led by Taminco, Carglass, Unilin and Janssen Pharmaceutica) add up to €14.5bn, more than the fall for the region as a whole. Brussels grew only slightly and piles up weaknesses: 32% of companies loss-making and 17% with negative equity, a reflection of the many holding company head offices and property companies based there.

Winning and losing sectors

The winners of 2025 are research and development (turnover up 33%, profit up fivefold, driven by pharmaceutical research centres), energy and food on volume, and IT and business services on profitability (profit up 30% and 50%). The losers are industrial: chemicals (profit cut to a third), machinery (halved), food (margins crushed despite sales up 10%), and energy on the profit side (Electrabel).

Restaurants as a whole still make a small profit (€0.3bn, slightly less than in 2024), but remain, with accommodation and personal services, the sector with the most loss-making companies. In real estate, 37% of companies are in the red: most are holding vehicles whose book loss is a choice, not an accident.

The giants’ club

The country’s ten largest statutory turnovers add up to nearly €160bn. Most belong to the purchasing centres and invoicing platforms of foreign groups (Toyota, ExxonMobil, Cargill, Mastercard): the turnover passes through Belgium, the jobs much less so. Antwerp refining is falling with oil prices; Electrabel, Mastercard and Colruyt are growing.

Biopharma carries Belgian results: UCB Pharma quadrupled its profit to €4.2bn, argenx increased its own fivefold and GSK Biologicals stays above €2bn. On the loss side, the figures reflect impairments and restructurings at subsidiaries of international groups, not operating difficulties.

Where the jobs are

86,286 companies publish an average headcount for 2025, a total of 2,193,774 full-time equivalents (FTE). Concentration is extreme: 1,153 companies with 250 FTE or more employ 49% of that total and generate 51% of published turnover. The 40,942 companies with 1 to 9 people together employ fewer than a sixth of the workforce of the 1,153 largest.

The ten largest employers

Rail, post, temporary staffing, retail, public transport: the ranking of employers looks much as it did twenty years ago. Staffing agencies appear because the temporary workers they place count in their own headcount. GSK Biologicals is the only manufacturer in the top 10.

How sound is Belgian business?

Rovalta scores 684,328 companies from 1 to 5 on solvency, liquidity, profitability and trend. The verdict: nearly one in two (49%) scores above 4, one in seven (13%) below 2. Negative equity is receding, from 13.0% of 2024 filers to 11.9% in 2025, and so is the share of loss-making companies. The business base is getting healthier, with one caveat: late filers, who file in the autumn, are on average more fragile than early ones.

The geography of fragility: 9.5% of Flemish companies score below 2, against 13.0% in Wallonia and 14.4% in Brussels. The Altman Z-score, for its part, puts 29% of companies in the distress zone: that reflects a business base made up of undercapitalised micro-companies, not a forecast of defaults. Only 2,128 companies report social security arrears (ONSS/RSZ) in their accounts.

The register in 2026

2,054,851 company numbers, 1,972,291 of them active, 1,194,509 of those legal entities. The BV/SRL (private limited company) has become Belgium’s default form: 45% of legal entities, far ahead of the non-profit association (VZW/ASBL) and the NV/SA (public limited company). A curiosity of the register: the 112,837 associations of co-owners, the country’s third-largest ‘legal form’, which are not businesses at all.

How we counted

• Sources: KBO/BCE Open Data and the NBB’s Central Balance Sheet Office: 7,930,396 filings covering 684,308 companies, extracted on 8 September 2026. Financial year 2025 means a year-end between 1 January and 31 December 2025; around 15% of filings are still missing.
• Filings carrying amounts impossible for their format were excluded from every calculation (over €20m in a micro filing, over €500m in an abridged one): around thirty filings, one of which showed €12bn of gross margin, EBITDA and profit for the previous year.
• Turnover and headcount are published only in full-format accounts and some abridged ones; 70% of 2025 filings use the micro format. Implausible headcounts were excluded and changes in headcount are not discussed.
• Sectors are based on the main activity recorded in the KBO/BCE, which is missing for a quarter of filers.

Read next: Belgian start-ups: what their accounts really say, the same method applied to young, venture-backed companies.