How much is the minimum wage in Belgium?
€2,233.61 gross per month for a full-time worker aged 18 or over, since July 2026, according to Securex’s table of current amounts. It was €2,189.81 from April to June 2026 and €2,154.11 from January to March 2026.
The official name is the guaranteed average minimum monthly income. It is a floor: no full-time employee in the private sector can be paid less, whatever their sector.
How is the minimum wage set and increased?
It is set by the social partners, through collective agreement n° 43 of the National Labour Council and its successive amendments. Two mechanisms move it.
The first is negotiated increases: the last planned step, €35 on 1 April 2026, closed the plan agreed in 2021. The second is indexation: when the pivot index is crossed, the minimum wage rises by 2%, as it did after June 2026. The Federal Planning Bureau expects the next pivot index to be crossed around the end of 2026, which would bring another 2%.
Why are sector minimum wages often higher?
Because each joint committee sets its own minimum scales by job class and years of experience. In Joint Committee 200, the salary scales are published by the Social Fund 200 and indexed every January.
The rule is simple: your employer must pay at least the higher of the two, the national minimum or your sector scale. For most IT and engineering roles, the market rate is far above both.
What does the minimum wage mean for IT and engineering jobs?
Mostly that it is not the relevant number. Salaries for developers, engineers or analysts are set by the market, by your experience and by scarcity, not by the legal floor.
Where it matters is at entry level and for students and interns, whose rules differ. If you want to know what your profile is worth, comparing real offers is more useful than any minimum. Start with IT and engineering roles currently open, then read our advice on negotiating salary during interviews.
