Where to live in Belgium
We track 4 cities in Belgium: Antwerpen, Brugge, Brussels and Gent. Average temperatures run from 11°C to 12°C. We estimate a couple needs €3,419 to €3,748 a month to live centrally. Belgium sits in our high tax tier. For citizens from outside the EU, EEA and Switzerland, long-term residency is possible, with conditions.
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- Tax tier
- High
- High personal income tax
- Languages
- Dutch, French
- Good English
- Safety
- 56/100
- country-level
- Healthcare
- 79/100
- country-level
- Internet
- ~100 Mbps
- median fixed broadband
The 4 cities we track
Source: City size from GeoNames, temperature from the Open-Meteo archive (2019 to 2023 averages), rainfall from TerraClimate (1991 to 2020 normals), coast distance from Natural Earth. Cost is our model estimate for a couple living centrally.
Taxes
Belgium sits in our high tax tier: high personal income tax. The tier applies to every city here, and couples who cap tax below it will not see these cities in their results.
Source: OurNextCity tax tiers, assigned by hand from each country's top marginal personal income tax rate and overall tax reputation, with no fixed rate cut-offs. Coarse by design; not tax advice.
Residency and visas
Possible, with conditions, for people from outside the EU, EEA and Switzerland. Belgium grants long-term residence mainly through employer-sponsored work permits, the EU Blue Card, a self-employed professional card, and a discretionary retirement/sufficient-means Type D visa, with no formal golden-visa or codified passive-income program; figures converted at 1 EUR = 1.16 USD (June 2026).
Citizens of the EU, EEA and Switzerland have freedom-of-movement or simplified residency rights here.
The cheapest self-funded routes we track for Belgium:
- Income: about $1,740 a month (Belgium Type D retirement / sufficient-means visa, consulate-expected EUR 1,500/mo lower bound (no official published threshold; assessed case by case); as of June 2026)
- Investment: about $232k (Belgium investor route via the professional card (business investment, no formal golden visa, reviewed case by case), typically EUR 200,000 to establish or run a Belgian company; as of June 2026)
For short visits, 93 of 198 passports can enter visa-free and 105 need a visa in advance.
Source: OurNextCity residency dataset, hand-reviewed approximations researched against published immigration rules, figures as of June 2026. Not legal advice: check the official source before you apply. Short-stay entry from the passport-index dataset (ilyankou, MIT).