The cutting edge Bold Brussels art museum put at risk by budget row

A year before its scheduled opening on 28 November 2026, building works at Kanal, a new contemporary art museum in Brussels, are on track.

- Philip Oltermann European culture editor

Housed in a remodelled former Citroën garage on the northwestern edge of the city centre, the centre is 95% complete. Curators are putting finishing touches to an opening show that will feature works by Matisse, Picasso and Giacometti, on loan from France’s Centre Pompidou. Trilingual wall texts in English, Dutch and French have already been signed off.

With 12,500 sq metres of exhibition spaces across five floor, an architecture centre, restaurants and live performance venues, the new museum should be larger than London’s Tate Modern, Palais de Tokyo in Paris or the Guggenheim Bilbao. The mammoth investment reflects a will to turn the administrative capital of Europe into a cultural destination.

Yet in recent weeks the conversation around Kanal’s opening has moved from “when” to “if”. A year and a half on from Belgian regional elections, a functioning government for the semi-autonomous Brussels-Capital region is still nowhere in sight. The only certainty seems to be the predicted austerity measures and mooted plans to slash Kanal’s budget by more than half.

“We never anticipated that 12 months before opening, and 18 months after the election, there would be no government,” said the museum’s director, Kasia Redzisz. “If there isn’t a decision on the budget, we risk having to stop construction, threatening the entire project’s future.”