What the Belgian studio scene looks like now
Belgium is a small country with a larger development scene than its size suggests. Here is the map of who is where, and what that map means when you are hiring for your own PC project.
Opening note
A studio count worth taking seriously
One hundred and fifteen entries — and a structure behind the number
Independent industry publication Spawnpoint reported more than 115 active game studios in Belgium, citing BelgianGames, and framed the country as a small but globally relevant development market. That number is worth reading carefully.
It does not mean a hundred and fifteen studios the size of a major publisher. It means a dense mix of small teams, contract shops, tools companies and a handful of larger production operations — and it means the competition for skilled people is real, not theoretical.
For a studio or a product team planning a PC project, the number is not the point. The structure behind the number is. A dense scene produces experienced people, a local market for contract work, and a career path inside the country — three things that shape staffing and scheduling more than any single directory figure. This page is a plain reading of that structure, written from inside it.
Cluster
Ghent, East Flanders
Where established production teams concentrate — the densest pool of senior artists, engineers and producers in the country.
Reference
Nacon Studio Ghent
Listed in the Belgian game-industry directory in Flanders and registered as an active studio entry in the 2026 live registry.
Why it matters
A cluster like that produces experienced people, creates a local market for contract work, and makes a career in games possible without leaving the country — three effects smaller teams feel directly.
Ghent & Flanders
The Flanders production cluster
Established teams, senior people, contract work
Flanders has the denser concentration of established production teams. Nacon Studio Ghent is listed in the Belgian game-industry directory in Flanders and appears as an active studio entry in the 2026 live registry — a good illustration of what a stable production operation looks like in the region.
Wallonia
Smaller studios and the regional spread
The scene is not only Ghent. Wallonia has its own production identity, and studios there often work on projects with international partners while staying rooted in the region.
City & regional listing
RRSTUDIO
RRSTUDIO is listed in the Belgian game-industry directory and appears in both city and regional listings connected to the Wallonia and Liège directory pages — a fair example of how smaller studios show up across the country. Liège and Wallonia have their own production rhythm: smaller teams, tighter external partnerships, and a habit of working with studios outside Belgium while keeping the operation local.
For a Belgian team, that means the ecosystem is not one city. Hiring, subcontracting and co-development all behave differently depending on whether you are looking in Ghent or in Liège, and planning for one and staffing out of the other is a mistake the market will charge for.
Reading the local context honestly
What the local context is actually good for
Works in a compact market
- Travel between studios and universities is short, which makes part-time teaching, guest lecturing and mentoring practical instead of heroic.
- Partnerships form over coffee rather than over flights, so a first conversation with a potential co-development partner is a same-week event.
- Reputation carries further than it would in a larger country, which raises the value of careful work and lowers the value of overselling.
- For a Belgian team, a local scene this dense means testers, localization help, and audio partners are all reachable within a single week of work.
Where it will bite
- Hiring is the chronic constraint. There are fewer senior engineers than there are teams that need them, and a studio cannot solve that with a job post and patience.
- It gets solved through long-term relationships, through contract work with a partner studio, and through being the kind of place people recommend to each other.
- Deadlines that assume a deep bench are deadlines that will slip. Schedule for the bench you have, not the one you would like.
- Specialists can also be too narrow: a small market has fewer people deeply fluent in DirectX 12, DirectStorage, or Windows performance work at scale.
The international connection
Belgian studios sell into a global market from day one.
Most Belgian teams work with publishers, platform holders and partners outside the country, and that outward orientation is part of the local character. It also means a Belgian team's competition is not the studio down the road; it is every studio anywhere making a similar game. Local context helps with hiring and partnership — it does not help with the market itself.
The practical consequence for a studio here is a two-track planning habit: schedule the local side (people, contracts, partners, hires) on Belgian timelines, and the market side (publishing, platforms, launches) on international timelines. Conflating the two is where small studios get caught.
Where a partner studio fits
Two ways an outside partner earns its place
Absorb a peak of work
Covering a production peak without a permanent hire — common here, and usually planned in advance rather than discovered mid-production.
Cover a missing specialty
Filling a technical gap the team does not have in-house — Windows performance work, DirectX 12, DirectStorage, or shipping infrastructure.
How to plan for it
Name the peak weeks before they arrive and the specialty a quarter in advance. The studios that manage the arrangement well are the ones that plan for it; the rest find it in the middle of production.
Before you plan
Reading the numbers sensibly
A studio count is a snapshot, and directory listings change. What does not change quickly is the structure of the scene: dense in Flanders, present in Wallonia, internationally oriented, and short on senior people. If you are planning a project in Belgium in 2026, that structure is a better guide than a headline number.
We work inside this context, and it shapes how we staff and schedule. That is not a marketing line — it is why we plan peaks against a smaller bench and why we treat subcontracting as a first-class production tool rather than a rescue.
Common questions
What teams usually ask when they look at Belgium
Is the Belgian scene really large enough to matter?
Spawnpoint, citing BelgianGames, reported more than 115 active game studios in Belgium — a real number for a country of its size. It is a mix of small teams, service studios and a handful of larger operations, not one deep bench in one city.
Why does Ghent keep coming up?
Flanders holds the denser concentration of established production teams, and Nacon Studio Ghent is listed there in the Belgian game-industry directory as an active studio entry in the 2026 live registry. That density is why experienced people and contract capacity are easiest to find in the region.
What about Liège and Wallonia?
Wallonia has its own production identity. RRSTUDIO, for instance, appears in both the city and regional listings connected to the Wallonia and Liège directory pages — a fair illustration of how smaller studios show up outside Flanders.
If hiring is hard, what actually works?
Long-term relationships, contract work with a partner studio, and being a place people recommend to each other. A job post is part of the answer; it is rarely the whole answer in a market this size.
Where to go from here
Planning a PC project inside this scene
We are based in Lochristi, close to the Flanders cluster. If you are staffing a PC title, an application, or a technical specialty that the local market does not cover easily, send a brief with the shape of the work and the window you are planning around.
Studio
Spectrum Innovation Solutions
Raveschoot 22, 9080 Lochristi, Belgium
Hours
Monday to Friday, 9:00 – 18:00