Starter grants for small businesses in Flanders: what each city pays in 2026

If you have just moved to Belgium and plan to open a business, you may expect the Flemish government to pay something towards your start, the way some countries hand out a start-up allowance. It does not. In Flanders a starter grant (in Dutch, *starterspremie*) is a city scheme: a city that wants fewer empty shop units in its high streets pays new businesses to open there. That is why the amount depends on the street, and why the conditions are strict: you must open on fixed days, stay at least three years, and often present a business plan.

This guide sets the grants of thirteen Flemish cities side by side, with their status in October 2026. For each city you see the amount, who it is for and what you need to do. For four cities we wrote a separate guide with every detail: starter grant in Ghent, starter grant in Sint-Niklaas, starter grant in Kortrijk and starter grant in Leuven.

A practical note for newcomers: every regulation, form and city page in this guide is in Dutch, the official language of Flanders. If your Dutch is not yet good enough, plan for a translator or a local accountant before you apply.

Who can get a starter grant

The conditions differ from city to city, but four return almost everywhere:

1. You open a shop or a hospitality business. Liberal professions, offices, services without a shop and often takeovers fall outside the scheme. Kortrijk excludes hospitality, Sint-Niklaas accepts it; Halle explicitly excludes hairdressers, accountants and estate agents.
2. Your business is inside the marked zone. A core shopping area, a focus area, a retail core: every city draws its own map. A unit two streets away can fall outside it.
3. You stay. Three years of trading is the rule. Stop earlier and you pay back: in Sint-Niklaas everything in the first year, half in the second, a quarter in the third.
4. You are open. Kortrijk asks for at least four days and twenty hours a week, Roeselare thirty hours and the yearly Sunday shopping days too.

Behind those four sits a fifth: the grant goes to a business, so you apply with your enterprise number. Register your company or sole proprietorship in the Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (KBO) first; a city cannot pay a business that does not exist yet.

What each city pays

The register below shows the same grants with their status. Every grant has a regulation; read it before you sign a lease, because some cities want your application within a fixed period after opening or after the lease.

Two cities that pay for your marketing

Most grants are free to spend or go to rent and fit-out. Two cities name marketing explicitly. Waregem gives starters who have been trading for at least six months 1,000 euros for the promotion and marketing of their business. Deinze pays 60 percent of your marketing and promotional material up to 1,000 euros, and lists the design of your logo and house style and the build of your website or online shop. Leuven did something similar with its starter grant, which also covered marketing and communication advice and a website, but that scheme is on hold.

How to get online cheaply without a grant: read web design for freelancers and how much a website costs.

What Flanders still does

The Flemish government pays no starter grant. The SME wallet (kmo-portefeuille), which refunded part of training and advice, ends on 1 January 2027, and its 2026 budget had already run out; the details are in our news item on the end of the kmo-portefeuille. What is left for digitalisation is in digitalisation grants in Flanders. Lommel asks applicants to complete the Startkompas of VLAIO, the Flemish business agency's questionnaire that tests your start-up plan; it is a useful exercise even without a grant.

Brussels is a separate region with its own rules: there a regional digitalisation premium can pay part of a website, under strict conditions. See website grant in Brussels. Whether any Belgian subsidy covers your website is answered briefly in website grants in Belgium.

Your application in five steps

1. Check on the city map whether your unit is inside the zone. Do this before you sign; the zone is in an annex to the regulation.
2. Read the full regulation. Exclusions are often at the back: takeovers, moves within the centre, certain sectors.
3. Write your business plan. Almost every city wants a plan and your opening hours; some want a three-year financial plan.
4. Apply within the deadline. Bruges within six months of opening, Kortrijk within six months of the lease, Ninove no earlier than three months after opening.
5. Keep to the conditions. Open on the agreed days, stay three years, let the city publicise your grant if it asks to.

Worked example: a coffee bar in Roeselare

Take a coffee bar opening in the core shopping area of Roeselare. As a hospitality business it gets 5,000 euros, in three instalments.

The business must be open at least thirty hours and four days a week, on the yearly Sunday shopping days too, and stay for three years. If it stops earlier, it pays (part of it) back. Had the same founder opened a shop instead of a coffee bar, the grant would have been 10,000 euros.

What the grant does not do

A grant of 5,000 or 10,000 euros covers a few months of rent or part of your fit-out. It does not bring customers. Opening in a core shopping area means opening in a street where your competitors already are, and customers find you first on Google Maps and Instagram. Put your Google Business Profile online before you open, with your hours and photos, and say in your first posts where you are and when you open. If you serve both locals and expats, write your profile and site in Dutch and English; a bilingual shop gets found by both. What a first site costs is in our website cost calculator.

If you are also renovating the shop front or the building, many cities have separate grants for that; they are in our guide to shop front grants in Flanders.

Common mistakes

• Signing first, reading laterRent a unit outside the zone and you get nothing, even if it is round the corner.
• Treating a takeover as a startKortrijk, Roeselare and other cities exclude taking over an existing business.
• Missing the deadlineAn application that is too late, or in Ninove too early, is not processed.
• Counting on the grant in your financingSome grants are only paid while budget remains, or in instalments over two years. Treat them as a bonus, not as start-up capital.
• Assuming your home country rules applyIn Belgium you register your business, VAT and social security before you trade; the grant comes after all of that, never instead of it.