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Construction companies in insolvency proceedings

The register publishes each company’s legal situation. This figure counts those whose code showed an insolvency proceeding under way on the day the register was read.

Companies in insolvency proceedings
7,174
Crossroads Bank for Enterprises13 Aug 2026Confirmed

Legal situation as the register stated it on the read date.

That is 3.4% of the 208,558 construction companies on the register.

By trade

Each company is counted once, under its main activity class.

  • Companies with legal personality
  • Sole traders
  1. Construction of residential and non-residential buildings41.001,633 · 14.1% sole traders
  2. Other specialised construction activities n.e.c.43.99776 · 22.3% sole traders
  3. Electrical installation43.21679 · 21.4% sole traders
  4. Joinery installation43.32611 · 22.7% sole traders
  5. Site preparation43.12468 · 26.3% sole traders
  6. Other building completion and finishing43.35456 · 26.3% sole traders
  7. Plumbing, heat and air-conditioning installation43.22435 · 20% sole traders
  8. Roofing activities43.41395 · 28.4% sole traders
  9. Painting and glazing43.34264 · 33.3% sole traders
  10. Floor and wall covering43.33238 · 20.6% sole traders
  11. Other construction installation43.24225 · 24.9% sole traders
  12. Insulation work43.23215 · 28.4% sole traders
  13. Masonry and bricklaying43.91200 · 40.5% sole traders
  14. Plastering43.31176 · 23.3% sole traders
  15. Construction of roads and motorways42.11114 · 20.2% sole traders
  16. Construction of utility projects for electricity and telecommunications42.2282 · 14.6% sole traders
  17. Demolition43.1170 · 15.7% sole traders
  18. Other specialised construction activities in the construction of buildings43.4264 · 26.6% sole traders

6 categories (73 companies) are not broken out: they described a group of sole traders too small to stay anonymous.

By province

The province is derived from the seat’s postcode; the register does not publish it.

  • Companies with legal personality
  • Sole traders
  1. Antwerp1,197 · 18.2% sole traders
  2. East Flanders1,092 · 25.3% sole traders
  3. West Flanders796 · 36.2% sole traders
  4. Brussels-Capital Region771 · 18.3% sole traders
  5. Flemish Brabant760 · 15.8% sole traders
  6. Limburg711 · 17.2% sole traders
  7. Hainaut665 · 22.3% sole traders
  8. Liège534 · 24.2% sole traders
  9. Namur325 · 26.2% sole traders
  10. Walloon Brabant226 · 13.3% sole traders
  11. Luxembourg95 · 26.3% sole traders

2 companies have a postcode outside Belgium or one we could not read: they count in the national total, but in no province.

Dated observations

What we observed, and when — not a national count of bankruptcies.

One reading of the register is not a trend. This series will appear once we have observed the register across several months; until then, the figure above is what the register said on the day it was read.

Last observed: 13 Aug 2026

Common questions

Is this the number of bankruptcies in Belgium?
No. It is the number of construction companies whose register entry showed an open proceeding on the day it was read. A closed bankruptcy no longer appears, and an open proceeding is not necessarily a bankruptcy.
Where are the companies concerned?
Nowhere on this page. It gives totals only; no company is named, and categories too small to stay anonymous are removed from it.

Method and sources

Counted here are the companies whose main activity code falls under NACE divisions 41, 42, 43 — construction — in version 2025 of the classification.

Register read on 13 Aug 2026. The register publishes one full extract per month; these figures change at that pace and no faster.

Any category describing fewer than 10 sole traders is taken out of the breakdown: a count small enough points at one person, and these pages point at nobody. Removed categories are reported under the table they came from.

Province and region are derived from the seat’s postcode: the register publishes a commune and a postcode, not a province. That derivation is ours.

An open proceeding is not a declared bankruptcy, and this figure is not a count of the year’s bankruptcies: it is how many companies carried, on that day, a legal-situation code meaning a proceeding is running.

The list of codes treated as insolvency is deliberately short. A code not on it reads as "no proceeding", which makes this under-count rather than over-count — the only acceptable direction of error for an adverse statement.

Source: Crossroads Bank for Enterprises (KBO/BCE), FPS Economy — open data — re-use conditions

These figures describe what the public register said on the day we read it. They are counts, not a ranking: no commune, no trade and no company is presented here as better or worse than another.