The Ommegang (‘walk-around’) began as a religious procession. According to the legend, in 1348 a devout woman named Beatrijs Soetkens brought a miraculous statue of the Virgin from Antwerp to the chapel of the crossbowmen’s guild at the Sablon, and the guild’s annual procession in its honour grew into a civic parade of guilds, magistrates and giants. On 2 June 1549 the city staged it in full splendour for Emperor Charles V, who had come to present his son, the future Philip II, to his Brabant subjects. The modern Ommegang, revived in 1930 for the centenary of Belgian independence, reconstructs that evening rather than the medieval procession, and in 2019 it was inscribed on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.
It is staged on two evenings in the first week of July; in 2026 these were Wednesday 1 and Friday 3 July. From about 20:30 the cortège of more than 1,400 participants leaves the Royal Park and the Sablon and winds through the city centre to the Grand-Place, where the gates open at 19:30 and the show begins at 21:00: the entry of the emperor and the court, the guilds and chambers of rhetoric, the city magistrates, horsemen, the giants, flag-throwers, the stilt-fighters of Namur, crossbowmen and folklore groups from across Belgium. Watching the procession in the streets is free; seats on the Grand-Place are ticketed.
Around the two shows the Sablon hosts a free Renaissance village and market (1–4 July 2026, 12:00–21:30) with equestrian jousting, knights’ foot combat and a camp of 15th-century mercenaries, and the crossbowmen’s guilds hold their traditional competition on the two show evenings at 19:15. Although the pageant recreates a Renaissance event, its procession, guilds, giants and crossbowmen are medieval institutions that have survived in the city.
Grand-Place tickets for 2026 ranged from about €55 for tribune seats to €85–89 for covered seats in front of the House of the Dukes of Brabant, sold through the Ommegang’s website and Ticketmaster; a bilingual programme costs €5 on the night. The Grand-Place is a ten-minute walk from Brussels Central station. The 2027 dates had not been announced as of August 2026; the pageant is normally held on the Wednesday and Friday of the first week of July.
