Experience

Brussels shows strong tourism stats as it’s the leading city in the world for international meetings

Posted by Timothy on

Brussels in Belgium is the leading city in the world for international meetings organised by international organisations. This is confirmed by the annual UIA ranking published late June 2025. The Brussels-Capital Region maintains its top position, and this excellent result reinforces the record-breaking tourism figures for our capital.

The Union of International Associations (UIA) released its annual report on 24 June. This marks the 66th edition of the International Meetings Statistics Report—one of the key benchmarks in the conference sector.

Brussels leads once again

Just like in the previous edition, our capital tops the ranking. This means that Brussels hosted the highest number of international meetings organised by international non-profit organisations. 

The report covers a total of 8,859 congresses held worldwide in 2024. No fewer than 388 of these (7%) took place in Brussels. Vienna in Austria comes in second (239 meetings), followed by Seoul in South Korea (180). Barcelona in Spain (159) and Tokyo in Japan (148) complete the top five.

It is the fourth consecutive year that our capital leads the global rankings. This strengthens Brussels’ position as an international conference city. Over the full period from 2005 to 2024, Brussels holds a firm first place, followed by Singapore and Vienna.

Convention and Association Bureau

Elisabeth Van Ingelgem, Director of Strategy and International at visit.brussels, is pleased with the strong result: “Our capital is home to around 2,470 international associations. They benefit from the active support of the Convention and Association Bureau of visit.brussels. In 2024, we achieved strong results with returning events such as the European Week of Regions and Cities at SQUARE, Hydrogen Europe at Brussels Expo, and FARI at Flagey. These business events each attract thousands of participants. Last year, we also attracted many new events such as AMI Plastics World, EthCC, and the World Cocoa Conference. In 2025, we’re continuing in this vein, as we are once again succeeding in bringing numerous returning and new events to Brussels.”

Record tourism figures

Brussels’ strong result comes in a year marked by record-breaking tourism numbers. Never before have so many people stayed in our capital as in 2024.

Tourist accommodations in Brussels recorded nearly 10 million overnight stays last year. That is significantly more than in 2023 (+4.8% based on preliminary figures), and even better than the previous record from 2019 (+3.6%).

Not only did hotel capacity increase in 2024, but the occupancy rate in Brussels hotels also improved. On average, 72.7% of hotel rooms were occupied—an increase of 1 percentage point compared to the previous year.

The good news is that even the traditionally quieter months saw improvement. There were increases in January and February, and especially strong growth in July, November, and December. This resulted in a more balanced spread across the year.

According to Patrick Bontinck, CEO of visit.brussels, the figures show that the efforts to promote tourism and cultural offerings in Brussels are bearing fruit: “Brussels clearly has a unique, cosmopolitan profile. You can see a lot of movement in terms of art, culture, gastronomy, and nightlife. We are getting better and better at showcasing this. Thanks to our decentralisation strategy, we now also see that tourism in our capital is more evenly spread over time and space.”

On tourism

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