PUBLISHED July 28, 2026
According to “Macroeconomic Projections for Belgium”, published by the National Bank of Belgium (NBB) on 12 June 2026, GDP growth is set to temporarily drop to 0.6 percent in 2026, down from 1 percent last year, but is expected to pick up and reach 1.3 percent by 2028 — a U-shaped trajectory that the bank characterises explicitly as temporary rather than a sign of deeper structural deterioration. The bank’s use of the specific term “temporary” throughout its accompanying communications is a deliberate choice intended to distinguish the current cyclical dip clearly from the kind of structural growth concerns that have periodically featured in the bank’s assessments of the Belgian economy over recent years.
Nearly 90,000 Jobs on the Horizon
Between 2026 and 2028, approximately 90,000 jobs are expected to be created, according to the bank’s projections — a substantial figure that, if realised, would provide meaningful support to Belgian households even as headline GDP growth remains modest through the middle of the decade. Spread across a three-year window, this figure implies an average of roughly 30,000 net new jobs annually, a pace the bank’s own historical comparisons suggest would represent a genuinely solid labour market performance by recent Belgian standards, even set against the comparatively modest GDP growth rates projected over the same period.
The Word “Temporary” Is Doing a Lot of Work
The bank’s framing of the 2026 slowdown as temporary rests on assumptions about the trajectory of the Middle East conflict and global energy markets — assumptions that, as with virtually every forecast produced in 2026, carry more uncertainty than the confident-sounding growth figures might suggest at first glance. Economists reviewing the bank’s technical appendices noted that the central projection embeds a specific assumption about energy prices gradually normalising over the course of 2027, an assumption that, if it proves overly optimistic, would likely require the bank to revise its more encouraging 2028 growth figure downward in subsequent forecast rounds.
Reducing projected growth from 1 percent to 0.6 percent represents a cut of nearly 40 percent in relative terms — a meaningful downward revision, even if the absolute numbers involved remain modest by historical standards for a mature European economy like Belgium’s. Framing the revision in relative, rather than purely absolute, terms helps convey the genuine scale of the adjustment the bank has made to its own prior expectations, even though the underlying absolute growth figures remain within a range that most economists would characterise as modest rather than alarming for an economy at Belgium’s stage of development.
Reducing projected growth from 1 percent to 0.6 percent represents a cut of nearly 40 percent in relative terms — a meaningful downward revision, even if the absolute numbers involved remain modest by historical standards for a mature European economy like Belgium’s. Framing the revision in relative, rather than purely absolute, terms helps convey the genuine scale of the adjustment the bank has made to its own prior expectations, even though the underlying absolute growth figures remain within a range that most economists would characterise as modest rather than alarming for an economy at Belgium’s stage of development.
The apparent disconnect between slowing GDP growth and continued job creation is not necessarily contradictory: employment figures often lag broader growth trends, and specific sectors — services, healthcare, public administration — can continue adding positions even during periods of GDP softness elsewhere in the economy. Belgium’s labour market has historically shown considerable resilience in exactly these sectors during previous periods of broader economic softness, a pattern the bank’s own economists expect to continue holding through the current cyclical dip based on comparable episodes over the preceding two decades.
The National Bank’s 0.6 percent figure for 2026 sits close to the Federal Planning Bureau’s own 0.7 percent projection and the OECD’s separate 0.7 percent estimate — a degree of convergence across Belgium’s principal forecasting institutions that lends credibility to the broad direction of the outlook, even where the precise decimal points differ. This near-unanimity among Belgium’s three principal forecasting bodies, despite their independent methodologies, gives businesses and policymakers a reasonably solid consensus base from which to plan, even as each institution’s own scenario analysis acknowledges the considerable uncertainty still surrounding the ultimate trajectory of the underlying Middle East disruption.
Belgium’s principal economic forecasters — the National Bank, the Federal Planning Bureau, and the OECD — have arrived at strikingly similar conclusions for 2026: a meaningful but temporary growth slowdown, driven by external geopolitical factors rather than domestic weakness, followed by a return to something closer to trend growth over the following two years. The consistency across institutions is reassuring. Whether the underlying assumption — that the Middle East disruption proves genuinely temporary — holds is, as always, the open question, and one that none of Belgium’s forecasting institutions claim to be able to resolve with certainty at this stage.
The apparent disconnect between slowing GDP growth and continued job creation is not necessarily contradictory: employment figures often lag broader growth trends, and specific sectors — services, healthcare, public administration — can continue adding positions even during periods of GDP softness elsewhere in the economy. Belgium’s labour market has historically shown considerable resilience in exactly these sectors during previous periods of broader economic softness, a pattern the bank’s own economists expect to continue holding through the current cyclical dip based on comparable episodes over the preceding two decades.
The National Bank’s 0.6 percent figure for 2026 sits close to the Federal Planning Bureau’s own 0.7 percent projection and the OECD’s separate 0.7 percent estimate — a degree of convergence across Belgium’s principal forecasting institutions that lends credibility to the broad direction of the outlook, even where the precise decimal points differ. This near-unanimity among Belgium’s three principal forecasting bodies, despite their independent methodologies, gives businesses and policymakers a reasonably solid consensus base from which to plan, even as each institution’s own scenario analysis acknowledges the considerable uncertainty still surrounding the ultimate trajectory of the underlying Middle East disruption.
Belgium’s principal economic forecasters — the National Bank, the Federal Planning Bureau, and the OECD — have arrived at strikingly similar conclusions for 2026: a meaningful but temporary growth slowdown, driven by external geopolitical factors rather than domestic weakness, followed by a return to something closer to trend growth over the following two years. The consistency across institutions is reassuring. Whether the underlying assumption — that the Middle East disruption proves genuinely temporary — holds is, as always, the open question, and one that none of Belgium’s forecasting institutions claim to be able to resolve with certainty at this stage.
