Brussels is marking Belgium’s National Day with a complete shutdown of the Brucity Administrative Centre and all municipal liaison offices on Monday 20 and Tuesday 21 July 2026. These two days of closure affect every counter that normally handles population registration, residence-card renewals, foreign‐national registrations, civil-status records and a host of other services that expatriates, cross-border workers and employers rely on. Although National Day is a fixed public holiday, the two-day closure comes at the height of the summer relocation cycle when many foreign employees arrive to start jobs on 1 August or 1 September. HR teams report that appointments for first registrations and A-card renewals were already booked solid through mid-August; applicants who had been counting on a walk-in slot this week will now have to use the city’s online MyBXL platform or wait until Wednesday 22 July. The city has kept a skeleton “Deaths Service” telephone line open on Monday for emergency civil-registry matters, but all other in-person counters, including those issuing certificates needed for residence‐permit applications at the Immigration Office, remain shuttered. Courier companies say they expect a 48-hour backlog in the delivery of legalised documents and police-registration certificates that feed into work-permit and single-permit dossiers. Corporate mobility managers are advising assignees to carry proof of their scheduled appointments and, where possible, to travel with multiple originals of legalised documents so they can proceed with other administrative steps while waiting for municipal registration to resume. Employers recruiting non-EU talent are being reminded that delays in municipal registration can postpone access to Belgium’s social-security system and the process to obtain tax residency certificates. In practice, the closure highlights the importance of building a buffer into assignment timetables around Belgian public holidays. With the next major closure scheduled for 15 August (Assumption Day), global mobility teams are urged to review their onboarding calendars now and to switch, wherever possible, to the newer online appointment system rolled out earlier this year by the City of Brussels.
Source: City of Brussels
