The largest companies in Belgium: the top 20 by revenue and the biggest employers

The largest company in Belgium is Toyota Motor Europe if you look at revenue filed in Belgium (38.5 billion euros), AB InBev if you look at worldwide group revenue, and HR Rail, the legal employer of the railway staff, if you count who has the most people on the payroll. Three lists, three winners, and none of them is wrong. They measure different things, and if you are building a prospect list, only one of them is the list you need.

This page gives you the top 20 by filed revenue from Bizzy, the top 10 by group revenue, the 15 largest employers, the largest company per region, the largest on the stock market, and (the figure nobody publishes) how many genuinely large companies Belgium actually has.

Key takeaways

• Worldwide group revenue puts AB InBev at number one. It counts what a group headquartered in Belgium earns all over the world, mostly far outside Belgium.

• Revenue filed in Belgium puts Toyota Motor Europe at number one, with 38.5 billion euros in its most recently filed annual accounts, ahead of Pfizer Service Company and Janssen Pharmaceutica. That list is dominated by subsidiaries of foreign groups, not by Belgian companies.

• Headcount puts HR Rail (27,787 full-time equivalents) and bpost at the top, with Colruyt Food Retail in third place. Three of the fifteen largest employers are staffing agencies, because the headcount line records who pays the wages, not where the work happens.

• Belgium has 1,720 enterprises with 250 or more employees and 390 with a thousand or more. That is the real size of the large-account market.

The three measures, and what they count

1. Worldwide group revenue

This is the Fortune and Forbes view: the consolidated revenue of a group whose headquarters happens to be in Belgium. It is the ranking most people have in mind.

Fortune Europe 500, 2023 edition, financial year 2022. Two caveats with this table: it reports in US dollars, while the Belgian ranking below is in euros and on a different basis, so the two are not comparable; and the Solvay row predates the December 2023 split into Solvay and Syensqo, so it describes a group that no longer exists in that form.

Look at row seven. Groupe Bruxelles Lambert books 9.5 billion dollars in revenue with 60 employees. It is a holding company: the revenue belongs to the companies it owns, and so do their tens of thousands of staff. Those sixty people are the holding itself. If you sell per user, per licence or per site, the company you would actually be selling to is one of the smallest accounts on this page, not the seventh largest.

That is the weak spot of every revenue ranking. It tells you where money is consolidated, not where people work or where a buying decision is made.

By market capitalisation, the list looks different again. On 22 October 2026, AB InBev was by far the largest listed Belgian company at 166 billion dollars, ahead of UCB (55 billion), KBC (54 billion), Ageas (18 billion) and Elia Group (15 billion), according to companiesmarketcap.com. Market capitalisation tells you what investors expect, not how much is sold in Belgium.

2. Revenue filed in Belgium

A completely different list, and for most B2B sellers the most useful one. It counts the revenue a Belgian legal entity reports in the annual accounts it files with the National Bank of Belgium.

The top 20 below comes from Bizzy: the revenue each Belgian legal entity reports in its most recently filed annual accounts (Bizzy, October 2026). Bizzy counts 106 active Belgian companies with more than 1 billion euros in revenue; these are the twenty largest.

Source: Bizzy, based on filed annual accounts, October 2026. *Figure from the Central Balance Sheet Office of the National Bank of Belgium, because the most recent annual accounts were not yet included in the Bizzy count. Pfizer Service Company files its annual accounts in US dollars; we show the amount as filed, without conversion. The financial year is the most recently filed one; where a financial year does not end on 31 December, both years are shown (2025/26 is April 2025 to March 2026). Staff is the average in full-time equivalents from the social balance sheet.

Most of the names in that top 20 do not appear in the Fortune table above, and there is a clear reason for that: they are Belgian entities of foreign groups. Colruyt Food Retail is the supermarket arm of Colruyt Group, which does appear in the Fortune list. Toyota Motor Europe is the European headquarters of a Japanese carmaker. Pfizer Service Company in Sint-Stevens-Woluwe is not the plant in Puurs, which is regarded as one of the largest pharmaceutical production sites in the world, but a company that, as the name says, provides services to the group, and a large part of what such an entity files is intra-group traffic rather than sales to Belgian customers. Both are huge on paper in Belgium, and neither is a Belgian company in any sense a salesperson would recognise.

In practice, that changes your approach; it does not disqualify the account. The Belgian entity is real, with real staff and real local budgets, but the decision on anything strategic is probably made in Toyota City or New York. Check the shareholder structure before you decide who to call.

3. Headcount

The employer ranking surprises most people, because ranking Belgian companies by the filed headcount line pushes staffing groups to the top.

The most likely explanation lies in how that line is defined. The headcount figure in annual accounts records who runs the payroll, not where the work happens. A temporary worker on a factory floor is employed by the agency that placed them, so the agency carries the headcount and the factory does not. Every employer ranking built from filed annual accounts inherits that.

If you size your accounts by headcount, read the filed figure as payroll population, not as how many people work here. For most companies, those are the same. For the largest employers on paper, they are not.

Who are the largest employers in Belgium?

By average headcount in full-time equivalents (FTE) from the social balance sheet, HR Rail is the largest employer in Belgium, ahead of bpost and Colruyt Food Retail (Bizzy, October 2026). Bizzy counts 37 active Belgian companies with at least 5,000 employees and 269 with at least 1,000.

Source: Bizzy, social balance sheet from the most recently filed annual accounts, October 2026, non-consolidated annual accounts. *Figure for financial year 2025 from the Central Balance Sheet Office of the National Bank of Belgium, because the most recent social balance sheet was not yet included in the Bizzy count.

Three of the fifteen are staffing agencies (Randstad, Adecco and Start People), and two others are the legal employer of an entire sector: HR Rail for the railway staff of NMBS and Infrabel, CEPA for the port workers of Antwerp. In the older ranking for financial year 2018 (reproduced on Wikipedia), Randstad Belgium was still number one, with 32,273 employees. So a list like this does not tell you who actually has the most people working at their own sites.

For a single company, you will find the headcount figure in the social balance sheet of the annual accounts; see the social balance sheet.

The largest companies per region

Based on the registered office, each region has a different winner. The registered office is the address of the legal entity, not necessarily where the factory is.

Source: Bizzy, based on filed annual accounts and the address of the registered office, October 2026. The revenue figure for Pfizer Service Company comes from the Central Balance Sheet Office of the National Bank of Belgium and is in US dollars, as filed.

How many large Belgian companies really exist

None of the three lists answers the question a sales or marketing team actually has: how many companies of a given size are there? Statbel publishes exactly that, and the shape of it is worth remembering.

Fifteen enterprises in the entire country have 10,000 employees or more. Fifty-seven have 5,000 or more. Below that, the numbers climb quickly: 390 with a thousand staff, 1,720 with 250, 7,896 with fifty.

Set against a register of 1,187,819 active enterprises, of which 997,481 have no employees at all, that is the more useful frame. Large-account selling in Belgium is not a market of thousands of targets. It is a market of a few hundred, and all your competitors are calling the same ones.

What Bizzy counts in the filed annual accounts

Bizzy counts 635 active Belgian companies with at least 200 million euros in revenue in their most recently filed annual accounts (Bizzy, October 2026). 244 of them reach half a billion, and 106 exceed a billion.

Source: Bizzy, October 2026. Revenue from the most recently filed annual accounts; for the revenue thresholds, only companies with staff in the social balance sheet. Employees are the staff from the social balance sheet. A company counts as soon as one of its Belgian legal entities reaches the threshold; group figures are not added together.

The difference from the Statbel figures above lies in what is counted. Bizzy only counts staff that appear in the social balance sheet of filed annual accounts. Anyone who does not file annual accounts with a social balance sheet falls outside the count. That is why Bizzy arrives at 269 employers with at least 1,000 employees, compared with 390 at Statbel.

By sector, you can see where the large revenue sits. Of the 635 companies above 200 million euros, 244 are active in wholesale, 209 in manufacturing, 119 in retail and 68 in transport and logistics. A company can have more than one activity and so count in more than one sector.

How to approach that filtering in practice is covered in our guide to TAM, SAM and SOM with real figures, and the Belgian business landscape in figures covers the rest of the register.

How do you find the top 100 or the full list?

A free, complete top 100 by revenue does not exist. What does exist:

• Bizzy builds the full list for you: filter on revenue or staff from the annual accounts, by region, province or sector, and you have all 106 companies above a billion or all 635 above 200 million in one list.

• The Central Balance Sheet Office of the National Bank of Belgium shows every filed set of annual accounts for free, company by company. That lets you check a single figure; see looking up annual accounts.

• Free third-party top lists are a starting point, but they are not complete. The 2025 employer list from jaarrekening.be left out Randstad Belgium and Adecco, so check every figure in the annual accounts themselves.

Building a prospect list from this

Four things to settle before the list is usable.

Pick one measure and stick to it. Revenue, headcount and group size rank the same companies in a different order. Ranking by revenue and then qualifying on users produces a list that falls apart at the first conversation.

Resolve the shareholder structure before outreach. The biggest names in Belgium are often subsidiaries. Whether the Belgian entity can decide on its own without asking a parent company is usually the most important qualifying fact there is, and it is published. Our page on looking up a company in the KBO explains where to look.

Expect revenue to be missing below the top. Revenue is an optional line in the abridged and micro formats, and those are what almost all Belgian companies file. Ranking a mid-market segment by published revenue quietly drops most of it. See finding a Belgian company's revenue.

Count establishments separately from companies. One enterprise can operate dozens of establishment units, each with its own address and its own activity codes. If you sell per site, the number of companies is the wrong denominator. See establishment units explained.

This is what Bizzy is built for. The group structure, the filed headcount figures with their four-year trend and the revenue where it exists all sit on one record, which turns "is this account independent, and how big is it really" into something you read rather than a research project.

Size is one list, growth is another. The Trends Gazelles rank the fastest growers per province.

See how Bizzy works for you

Build your own list of the largest Belgian companies, with revenue, headcount and the right contacts. Book a demo with our team, or try Bizzy yourself right away.

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Frequently asked questions

How many Belgian companies have more than 200 million euros in revenue?

Bizzy counts 635 active Belgian companies with at least 200 million euros in revenue in their most recently filed annual accounts, of which 106 exceed a billion (Bizzy, October 2026). Group figures are not added together: this is the revenue of the Belgian legal entity.

What is the largest company in Belgium?

That depends on the measure. By worldwide group revenue, it is AB InBev. By revenue filed in Belgium, it is Toyota Motor Europe, with 38.5 billion euros in its most recently filed annual accounts, ahead of Pfizer Service Company (36.8 billion dollars) and Janssen Pharmaceutica (21.8 billion euros), according to Bizzy. By filed headcount, it is HR Rail.

What are the 100 largest companies in Belgium?

A complete, free top 100 does not exist. In Bizzy, you build that list yourself with a filter on revenue from the annual accounts: 106 active Belgian companies exceed 1 billion euros, and 635 exceed 200 million (Bizzy, October 2026). The top 20 is shown above, along with the largest per region and the 15 largest employers.

Who is the largest employer in Belgium?

By average headcount in the social balance sheet, it is HR Rail, with 27,787 full-time equivalents, ahead of bpost (23,730) and Colruyt Food Retail (16,339), according to Bizzy. HR Rail is the legal employer of the staff of NMBS and Infrabel. Staffing agencies rank high because their temporary workers are on their own payroll, not on that of the company where they work.

What are the 10 largest employers in Belgium?

By average staff in full-time equivalents: HR Rail, bpost, Colruyt Food Retail, Randstad Belgium, BNP Paribas Fortis, MIVB, CEPA, Familiehulp, GSK Biologicals and Adecco, according to Bizzy. Two of them are staffing agencies.

Why do Belgian company rankings contradict each other?

Because they count different things: consolidated worldwide group revenue, revenue filed by a single Belgian legal entity, or the number of people on a payroll. A holding company can top a revenue list with sixty employees.

How many large companies does Belgium have?

1,720 active enterprises have 250 or more employees, 390 have a thousand or more, 57 have 5,000 or more and 15 have 10,000 or more, out of a total of 1,187,819 active enterprises.

Why are there so many staffing agencies in Belgian employer rankings?

Because the headcount figure in the annual accounts records who runs the payroll, not where the work happens. Temporary workers are employed by the agency that places them, not by the company where they work, so the agency carries the headcount.

What are the largest companies in Flanders?

By revenue from the annual accounts, they are Pfizer Service Company in Sint-Stevens-Woluwe (36.8 billion dollars), Janssen Pharmaceutica in Beerse (21.8 billion euros) and ExxonMobil Petroleum & Chemical in Antwerp (19.9 billion euros), according to Bizzy. The largest Flemish employer is Colruyt Food Retail in Halle, with 16,339 full-time equivalents.

What is the largest listed company in Belgium?

AB InBev, with a market capitalisation of 166 billion dollars on 22 October 2026. It is followed by UCB and KBC, each at around 55 billion dollars.

Are the largest companies in Belgium actually Belgian?

Often not. Several of the largest by filed revenue (Toyota Motor Europe, Pfizer Service Company, Janssen Pharmaceutica, ExxonMobil, TotalEnergies) are Belgian entities of foreign groups. Check the ownership structure before you assume the buying decision is made locally.

Sources

• Bizzy: revenue and staff from filed annual accounts, rankings and counts of active Belgian companies (accessed on 29 October 2026)

• Statbel be.STAT: Active enterprises by economic activity and employee size class (reference date 31 December 2024)

• Statbel: Annual evolution of VAT-registered enterprises (published 16 October 2025)

• jaarrekening.be, largest employers by headcount (financial year 2018), as reproduced on Wikipedia

• Fortune Europe 500, 2023 edition (financial year 2022), as compiled in the list of largest companies in Belgium

• National Bank of Belgium: Central Balance Sheet Office

• National Bank of Belgium: annual accounts in the Central Balance Sheet Office, financial year 2025, revenue and average staff in FTE (accessed on 22 October 2026)

• companiesmarketcap.com: largest Belgian companies by market capitalisation (accessed on 22 October 2026)

Written by Arthur Cremers at Bizzy, which builds B2B company data from the official registers and enriches it with online sources such as company websites, news sites, LinkedIn and Google Maps.