Minimum wage in Belgium 2026: the national floor and PC 200 scales

Belgium’s guaranteed minimum stands at €2,233.61 gross a month from 1 July 2026, for a full-time worker aged 18 or over. Its official name is the guaranteed average minimum monthly income: revenu minimum mensuel moyen garanti (RMMMG) in French, gewaarborgd gemiddeld minimum maandinkomen (GGMMI) in Dutch.

The figure moved twice in 2026. On 1 April it rose to €2,189.81 when collective agreement no. 43/18 added a structural step. Unlike indexation, which only tracks prices, that step was negotiated as a real increase in the floor. Then prices pushed the index past its pivot figure in June, which triggered a 2% indexation from 1 July which produced the current €2,233.61.

The minimum is not written into a statute in the usual way. It comes from collective agreement no. 43, concluded within the National Labour Council (CNT / NAR), where national employer and union organisations negotiate cross-sector rules. That origin explains why it changes both through new agreements, as in April, and through automatic indexation, as in July.

The RMMMG applies to full-time work. Full-time here means the Belgian norm: within the ordinary limits of 8 hours daily and 40 weekly, averaging 38 hours a week across the year, the same reference PC 200 uses. A salary quoted for a role with a shorter week needs to be read against a full-time equivalent before it is compared with the minimum.

For 2027, no further structural step or new index adjustment has been confirmed at the time of writing in October 2026, so budgets for next year should start from €2,233.61 and allow for change.

The word “average” in the official name is doing real work. The RMMMG guarantees an average monthly income, and a December bonus (the 13th month) is included when that average is measured. Compliance is therefore assessed on the worker’s pay including that bonus, not only on the twelve ordinary salaries.

For most employers hiring professional staff, the distinction never comes into play, because their salaries are far above the line. It matters at the bottom of the pay range, where an employer that pays a 13th month has a little more room in the monthly figure than one that does not. Check the calculation with the payroll before relying on it, and remember that a starter who joins mid-year receives only a pro rata bonus, which changes the arithmetic in the first year.

The national minimum is also the last line of defence rather than the usual reference. Most employees are covered by a joint committee whose own scales sit above it, and those sector scales are the figures that decide most offers in practice.

Above the national floor, minimum pay in Belgium is set sector by sector. Joint committees (commission paritaire / paritair comité, PC), made up of employer and union representatives for a sector, negotiate collective agreements (CCT / CAO) that fix minimum scales, indexation, bonuses and working time. Once a royal decree makes an agreement binding, it applies to every employer in the sector.

Belgium has no statutory minimum for individual jobs beyond the RMMMG. A data engineer and a receptionist are protected by the same national figure; what separates their minimums is the sector agreement and the job class within it.

Which committee applies depends on the employer’s activity, and sometimes on the split between manual (blue-collar) and office (white-collar) work. The FPS Employment publishes minimum wages by joint committee and sub-committee, which is the place to start when the sector is not obvious. Getting the committee wrong means applying the wrong scale, the wrong bonuses and the wrong indexation date, so it is the first thing to settle before a salary is quoted.

Most foreign companies meet PC 200 first. Officially the auxiliary committee for white-collar employees, it catches office staff in any business without a committee of its own. Its scales group jobs into four classes, and for someone with no experience (Barème I) the minimums from January 2026 are:

• Class A: €2,242.80 a month.
• Class B: €2,336.26 a month.
• Class C: €2,369.30 a month.
• Class D: €2,555.72 a month.

The class comes from the function the employee performs, and each scale then rises with years of experience, so a senior hire in Class B can sit well above a newcomer in Class D. These are minimums for a 38-hour week, the PC 200 average over the year.

Set against the national figure, the gap at the bottom is narrow. The Class A starting scale is only €9.19 a month above the RMMMG of €2,233.61 that has applied since July. In practice that means PC 200 Class A, not the national minimum, is the binding floor for a white-collar starter, and the two need to be watched together whenever either one moves.

Here is what the Class A floor means over a full year for a starter with a complete reference year behind them: twelve salaries of €2,242.80 make €26,913.60, the 13th month adds €2,242.80, the June premium €330.84, and double holiday pay at 92% another €2,063.38. Total gross comes to €31,550.62. At that level the structural reduction applies, because quarterly pay stays well below €11,458.57, so the employer’s ONSS bill is lower than a flat 25% would suggest. The exact reduction comes from a quarterly formula with several coefficients, so take it from the payroll rather than estimating it.

PC 200 also adds payments that the national minimum does not require. Staff with six months of service collect a 13th month in December, equal to their monthly pay. An annual premium of €330.84 gross is paid in June 2026, pro rata, unless the company already grants equivalent purchasing-power benefits.

Belgian minimum pay rises automatically with prices, but each floor follows its own index mechanism and its own date, which gives employers two months to watch: July this year for the national figure, and January every year for PC 200. The national minimum moved in July 2026 because the pivot index was exceeded in June. PC 200 scales, by contrast, are indexed every January, using the smoothed health index as it stands in late December; on 1 January 2026 the increase was 2.21%, applied to the scales and to actual salaries alike.

Real increases beyond indexation are a separate matter. The wage norm limits the growth of real wage costs, and for 2025-2026 a royal decree of 12 September 2025 set it at 0%. Indexation and scale increases are still guaranteed under that norm, but it leaves no room for real wage-cost increases on top of them in this period.

The 2026 index-centimes cap does not reach minimum-level pay. The cap applies solely to pay over €4,000 gross monthly (full-time terms), and PC 200 salaries feel it for the first time in January 2027. A starter on a Class A or B scale is indexed in full. The January 2027 PC 200 percentage itself will only be known once the December 2026 index figures are published.

Several Belgian rules use salary thresholds that are not minimum wages but act like them for particular hires. They often sit far above the sector scales, so check them before an offer is sent.

• Single permits. A non-EU hire must meet the regional threshold. The highly qualified category needs €3,703.44 a month in Brussels, €53,220 a year in Wallonia and, for candidates of 30 or older, €48,912 a year in Flanders. Blue Card floors are higher still, at €4,748.00 a month in Brussels and €68,815 a year in Wallonia. Flanders converts its annual figure to a monthly one by dividing by 13.92 when the package includes the December bonus and holiday pay, which puts it at about €3,514.
• Non-compete clauses. Below €44,447 of yearly pay on the leaving date (the 1 January 2026 amount), any such clause is void.
• The expat tax regime. The special regime for inbound taxpayers requires gross pay of at least €70,000 a year, after the Act of 18 December 2025 lowered the threshold from €75,000.

One rule works in the employer’s favour at the low end. The structural reduction lowers employer social security contributions for low and middle wages, and it disappears once quarterly pay passes €11,458.57, about €3,820 a month. A role paid near the minimum therefore costs proportionally less in ONSS than a professional salary.

Hiring through an employer of record puts the Belgian contract with the EOR, so it is the EOR that confirms the joint committee and job class before anything is drafted. With Employer of Record Belgium, we check the committee and class, compare your proposed salary with the scale and any permit threshold, and tell you if the figure falls short.

A salary that clears the scale on day one still has to keep pace. January indexation is compulsory under PC 200, the two extra payments in June and December lift the annual cost, and the scale for the employee’s class moves up with experience. Our guide to employer cost in Belgium turns a monthly salary into a full-year budget with those elements included.

Bring three facts to that check. The main activity of your business points to the joint committee. The real tasks and seniority of the role decide the class and the experience step on the scale. And the place where the person will work determines whether a regional permit threshold applies on top. With those three answers, the floor for the role can be stated as a single figure, and the offer can be written above it with room for the next indexation.

For a broader view of the hiring sequence, from committee check to first payslip, read your first hire in Belgium and choosing an EOR in Belgium, which lists the pay questions worth putting to any provider.