Most people inBelgium do not belong to a religion.Christianity is the largest religion, with theCatholic Church representing the largest community. Catholicism has experienced a significant decline since the 1950s when it was the nominal religion of over 80% of the population. Belgium's policyseparates the state from the church, andfreedom of religion is guaranteed by the country'sconstitution.
According to theEuropean Social Survey in 2023, people who did not belong to a religion comprised 59% of the Belgian population. The share of Christians was 34%, with Catholicism being the largest denomination at 31% of the population.Protestants and other Christians comprised 2% andOrthodox Christians comprised 1%. Islam is the second largest religion with 6% of the population beingMuslim.
According to a 2010Eurobarometer poll:[3]
In a 2022Gallup International Association poll, 32% said that they believed in God, while 42% said that they did not.[4]
| Religious group | Population % 1981[5] | Population % 2009[5] |
|---|---|---|
| Christianity | 74.5% | 52.5% |
| Catholic Christianity | 72.0% | 50.0% |
| Protestant Christianity and other Christians | 2.5% | 2.5% |
| Islam | 3.0% | 5.0% |
| Judaism | 0.4% | 0.4% |
| Buddhism | – | 0.3% |
| Atheism | 2.5% | 9.2% |
| Not religious | 21.5% | 32.6% |
| Religious group | Population % 2015[6] | Population % 2018[7] | Population % 2019[8] | Population % 2021[9] |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Christianity | 59% | 63% | 60% | 49% |
| Catholic Christianity | 51% | 57% | 54% | 44% |
| Protestant Christianity and other Christians | 6% | 5% | 5% | 4% |
| Orthodox Christianity | 2% | 1% | 1% | 1% |
| Islam | 5% | 8% | 5% | 2% |
| Buddhism | – | – | – | 1% |
| Other religions and unspecified including "Refusal to answer" and "Do not know" | 5% | – | 4% | 7% |
| Atheism | 14% | 9% | 10% | 15% |
| Not religious | 17% | 20% | 21% | 26% |
TheEuropean Social Survey holds regular surveys to measure religious belonging in various countries. They use a two question approach. The first question asked is: "Do you consider yourself as belonging to any particular religion or denomination?". If this question is answered in the affirmative, the second question is "Which one?". The table is calculated by combining the answers to both questions.
| Religious group | 2002 | 2004 | 2006 | 2008 | 2010 | 2012 | 2014 | 2016 | 2018 | 2020 | 2023 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| No religion | 50.2% | 54% | 56.2% | 55.8% | 57.8% | 58.6% | 58.8% | 54.2% | 53.8% | 57.6% | 58.7% |
| Christian | 45.9% | 41.3% | 40.4% | 38.9% | 36.8% | 33.9% | 34.8% | 37.2% | 37% | 35.1% | 33.9% |
| Roman Catholic | 43.9% | 40% | 38.8% | 36.9% | 34.3% | 31.8% | 31.6% | 35.1% | 33.6% | 31.2% | 31.1% |
| Protestant | 0.6% | 0.5% | 0.6% | 1% | 1.1% | 1.1% | 0.9% | 0.8% | 1.4% | 1.4% | 1.3% |
| Eastern Orthodox | 0.1% | 0.2% | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.7% | 1.3% | 0.8% | 1.2% | 1.7% | 0.6% |
| Other Christian | 1.3% | 0.6% | 0.6% | 0.6% | 1% | 0.3% | 1% | 0.5% | 0.8% | 0.8% | 0.9% |
| Islam | 2.8% | 3.9% | 3.2% | 4.1% | 4.7% | 6.5% | 5.8% | 7.4% | 7.7% | 7% | 6.4% |
| Jewish | 0.1% | 0% | 0.2% | 0.1% | 0.3% | 0.2% | 0% | 0% | 0.2% | 0.2% | 0.1% |
| Eastern religions | 0.2% | 0.5% | 0.1% | 0.4% | 0.3% | 0.4% | 0.4% | 0.5% | 0.7% | 0.2% | 0.2% |
| Other | 0.6% | 0.3% | 0% | 0.6% | 0.1% | 0.5% | 0.2% | 0.6% | 0.6% | 0.2% | 0.6% |
The Belgian constitution provides for freedom of religion, and the government generally respects this right in practice. However, government officials have the authority to research and monitor religious groups that are not officially recognised. There are a few reports of societal abuses or discrimination based on religious belief or practice, and some reports of discrimination against minority religious groups.
Belgian law officially recognizes many religions, including Catholicism, Protestantism,Anglicanism, Islam, Judaism, andEastern Orthodoxy, as well as non-religious philosophical organizations (Dutch:vrijzinnige levensbeschouwelijke organisaties; French:organizations laïques).[30]Buddhism is in the process of being recognized under the secular organization standard.[31] Official recognition means that priests (called "counselors" within the secular organizations) receive a state stipend. Also, parents can choose any recognized denomination to provide religious education to their children if they attend a state school. Adherents to religions that are not officially recognized are not denied the right to practice their religion but do not receive state stipends.
After attaining autonomy from the federal government in religious matters, theFlemish Parliament passed a regional decree installing democratically elected church councils for all recognised religious denominations and making them subject to the same administrative rules as local government bodies, with important repercussions for financial accounting andopen government. In 2006, however, Catholic bishops still appointed candidates to the Catholic Church councils because they had not decided on the criteria for eligibility; they were afraid that candidates might be merely baptized Catholics. By 2008, however, the bishops decided that candidates for the church councils had only to prove that they were over 18, a member of the parish church serving the town or village in which they lived, and baptized Catholic.[32]
In 2022, the country was scored 3 out of 4 for religious freedom.[33]
Catholicism has traditionally been Belgium's majority religion, with particular strength in Flanders. However, by 2009, Sundaychurch attendance was 5.4% in Flanders, down from 12.7% in 1998.[34] Nationwide, Sunday church attendance was 5% in 2009, down from 11.2% in 1998.[35]
Until 1998, the Catholic Church annually published key figures such as Sundaymass attendance and the number of baptized children. In 2006, it announced that mass attendance for the Christmas period was 11.5%, and weekly mass attendance (not only on Sundays) was 7%,[36] for the Flanders region. Since 2000, Sunday church attendance in Flanders has dropped by an average of 0.5%–1% each year.[37] In the years 2010 to 2016, 12,442 people in Flanders formally left the Catholic Church.[38]
The “Catholic Church in Belgium 2023” report said that 50% of Belgium’s population identified as Catholic in 2022 down from 53% in 2017 with 8.9% attending Mass at least once a month.[39]
In 1566, at the peak of BelgianReformation, there were an estimated 300,000 Protestants, or 20% of the Belgian population.[40] The Spanish reconquest of the Southern Netherlands in theEighty Years' War prompted most of the Belgian Protestants to flee to the north or convert, causing the region to again be overwhelmingly Catholic. As of 2017, Protestantism represented 4% of the total population, according to Pew Research.[41]
The Administrative Council of Protestant and Evangelical Religion in Belgium is a coordinating group that mediates between many Protestant groups and the government. The largest Protestant denomination is theUnited Protestant Church in Belgium, with some 138 affiliated churches.[42]
Belgium had thirteenAnglican churches as of 2012,[42] including thepro-cathedral,Holy Trinity, Brussels. They are part of theChurch of England'sDiocese in Europe, and of theConvocation of Episcopal Churches in Europe.[43]
Eastern Orthodox Christians made up 1.6% of the total Belgian population in 2015.[44] The region with the greatest proportion of Eastern Orthodox Christians was theBruxelles-Capital Region, in which they formed 8.3% of the population.[45] The Eastern Orthodox Church in Belgium is subdivided into several canonical jurisdictions:Russian,Ecumenical,Serbian,Romanian, andBulgarian.
There are significantArmenian communities that reside in Belgium, many of them are descendants of traders who settled during the 19th century. Most Armenian Belgians are adherents of theArmenian Apostolic Church, with smaller numbers belonging to theArmenian Catholic Church or theArmenian Evangelical Church. These churches have not yet received official recognition.
TheMormon Church opened in 2025 inBrussels their firsttemple in Belgium. They estimated to have 7.000 members at that time.[46]
In 2015, according to the Eurobarometer survey made by theEuropean Commission, 5.2% of the total Belgian population wasMuslim.[44]
As of 2015, it was estimated that 7% of the Belgians (781,887) were Muslims, including 329,749 in Flanders (forming 5.1% of the region's population), 174,136 in Wallonia (4.9%), and 277,867 in Brussels (23.6%).[47]
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There is a small but long-standing Jewish community concentrated inAntwerp.
Eurobarometer 2015 found only 0.2% of the total Belgian population declaring to beBuddhist.[44] Despite that, one year later Ipsos found that 2% of the working-age, internet connected Belgians were Buddhists.[48]
According to Ipsos, 1% of the working-age, internet-connected Belgians declared that they believed in Confucianism.[48] This segment of the population may include many – if not all – theChinese communities in Belgium.
Hinduism forms a negligible but growing minority in Belgium. In 2006, there were about 6,500 Hindus in the country.[49] this increased to 7,901 Hindus in 2015[50] and 10,000 in 2020.[51] The majority of Hindus in Belgium originate fromNepal, some come from diamond trading communities in India, and some are native converts, mostly of theISKON movement.[52][49] Hindus in Belgium in 2023 push to be recognized as an official religion in Belgium.[53]
Antoinism is a Christian-inspirednew religious movement which was created by Louis-Joseph Antoine (1846–1912). It remains the only significant such movement to originate in Belgium and has adherents in France and elsewhere.
Jainism is anIndian religion which has around 2,000 adherents in Belgium (as of 2020), consisting mainly of Indian migrants who specialize in the diamond trade withinAntwerp. TheShankheswar Parshvanath Jain temple, which is located in the Antwerpian municipality ofWilrijk, remains the onlyJain temple withincontinental Europe.[54]
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After the Roman period, Christianity was brought back to the southernLow Countries by missionary saints likeWillibrord andAmandus. In the 7th century,abbeys were founded in remote places, and it was mainly from these abbeys that theChristianization process was started. This process was expanded under the auspices of theMerovingian dynasty, and later byCharlemagne, who even waged war to impose the new religion.
From the Spanish military conquest of 1592 until the re-establishment of religious freedom in 1781 by thePatent of Toleration underJoseph II of Austria, Catholicism was the only religion allowed, on penalty of death, in the territories now forming Belgium. However, a small number of Protestant groups managed to survive atMaria-Horebeke,Dour,Tournai,Eupen, andHodimont.[55]
Religion was one of the differences between the almost solidly Catholic south and the predominantly Protestant north of theUnited Kingdom of the Netherlands, formed in 1815. The union broke up in 1830 when the south seceded to form the Kingdom of Belgium. In Belgium's first century, Catholicism was such a binding factor socially that it prevailed over thelanguage divide (Dutch versus French). The decline in religion's importance as asocial marker across late-20th-century Western Europe explains to a large extent the current centrifugal forces in Belgium, with language differences (increasingly reinforced by a positive feedback effect in the media) no longer being kept in check by a religious binding factor. If anything, the Catholic Church has acquiesced to these changes by having a Dutch-speaking university (Katholieke Universiteit Leuven) and a French-speaking university (Universite Catholique de Louvain).
Until the late 20th century, Catholicism played an important role in Belgian politics. One significant example was the so-calledSchools' Wars (Dutch:schoolstrijd; French:guerres scolaires) between the country's philosophically left-wing parties (liberals at first, joined by Socialists later) and the Catholic party (later theChristian Democrats), which took place from 1879 to 1884 and from 1954 to 1958. Another important controversy happened in 1990, when the Catholic monarch,King Baudouin I, refused to ratify an abortion bill that had been approved byParliament. The king asked Prime MinisterWilfried Martens and his government to find a solution, which proved novel. The government declared King Baudouin unfit to fulfill his constitutional duties as monarch for one day. Government ministers signed the bill in his place[56] and then proceeded to reinstate the king after the abortion law had come into effect.
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In 2002, the officially recognized Protestant denomination at the time, the United Protestant Church of Belgium[57] (consisting of around 100 member churches, usually with aCalvinist orMethodist past) and the unsubsidized Federal Synod of Protestant and Evangelical Churches (which had 600 member churches in 2008 but did not include allEvangelical andCharismatic groups outside the Catholic tradition) together formed the Administrative Council of the Protestant and Evangelical Religion (ARPEE in Dutch, CACPE in French). The council is now the accepted mouthpiece of Protestantism in all three linguistic communities of Belgium: Dutch, French, and German.
The 21st century has witnessed significant changes in the religious demography of Belgium, characterized by a decline of Catholicism and the growth of irreligion and other religions, some of them brought by waves of immigration from foreign countries, includingPentecostalism,Orthodox Christianity,Islam,Hinduism,Buddhism andChinese religions.[citation needed]
Apart from Islam, however, these groups are very small demographically, especially alongside the unaffiliated demographic of 37%.[41]
In 2024, the Belgian Catholic Bishops’ Conference reported a slight increase in Sunday Mass attendance, with an average of 173,335 people attending on a “regular Sunday in October,” up from 167,360 in 2023.
The number of adult baptisms (catechumens) has also risen: from around 180 in 2015 to 362 in 2024, with 536 expected in 2025.
However, regular attendance remains low in comparison with earlier decades, and identity‐based affiliation (identifying as Catholic[58]) continues to exceed levels of active participation.
In May 2024 the European Court of Human Rights upheld the admissibility of Belgium’s ban on visible religious symbols (including headscarves) in the Flemish Community’s public school network, finding that a policy of state neutrality may justify general prohibitions when applied without discrimination.
Similarly, under Belgian law, public sector employers may enforce[59] neutrality policies regarding visible religious symbols provided such rules are general, nondiscriminatory, and necessary to the functioning of the institution.
Data from the European Union Fundamental Rights Agency indicate a rising incidence of discrimination against Muslims in Belgium,[60] particularly in employment and housing.
