Non-compete clause in Belgium: 2026 pay thresholds, inventions and IP

Check the salary before you argue about scope or duration. Belgian law makes a non-compete depend on the employee’s annual gross pay at the moment the contract ends, not on the figure in the offer letter. The amounts in force from 1 January 2026 sort employees into three bands:

• €44,447 or less: the clause is invalid, whatever its wording.
• From €44,447 to €88,895: the clause works only for functions that a collective agreement (CCT / CAO) lists as eligible.
• Above €88,895: the clause works unless a collective agreement excludes that particular function.

Because the test runs at termination, timing can flip the result. A junior analyst who signs on €40,000 with a restriction in the contract may cross into the middle band after a few raises and two rounds of automatic indexation. The reverse also happens: someone moved into a smaller role on lower pay can drop below the line, and the clause written for the bigger job quietly stops binding them.

The thresholds move every year, so date any figure you rely on. Before a resignation or dismissal is processed, recheck the current amount on the FPS Employment page on non-compete clauses, which also lists the conditions summarised below.

A large share of the people foreign companies hire in Belgium earn between the two thresholds, so the collective agreement question decides their case. A backend developer on €62,000, a channel manager on €58,000 and a controller on €75,000 all sit below €88,895. For each of them, the clause has effect only if a collective agreement names the function.

Two texts set the framework, collective agreement no. 1bis and the 1978 employment contracts law (dated 3 July), with sector agreements negotiated in the joint committees (PC). Many white-collar roles fall under PC 200, the auxiliary committee for employees whose employer has no sector committee of its own. Reading the right agreement is part of the drafting, not an afterthought.

If no agreement lists the role, the honest answer is that a non-compete will not hold. The drafting time is better spent on the protections that do not depend on the salary bands: confidentiality, clear ownership of work product and a sensible notice arrangement.

Above €88,895 the default reverses. Heads of sales, senior architects and country directors at that level can usually be bound, and the work shifts to getting the scope, territory and indemnity right.

Passing the salary test does not make the clause safe. Each of the following conditions must also be met, and a single failure is enough to leave the employer with nothing to enforce:

• It is in writing, either in the employment contract or in a signed amendment.
• It covers activities similar to those the employee actually performed, not the whole sector.
• Its territory is limited to the places where the employee could really compete with the employer, and it never extends beyond Belgium.
• It runs for 12 months at most after the contract ends.
• It promises a one-off indemnity of at least half the employee’s gross pay for the period the restriction covers.

The indemnity is where a non-compete becomes a budget line. Take a sales director who leaves on €96,000 a year with a six-month restriction. Six months of gross pay is €48,000, so the minimum indemnity is €24,000, paid in one go. At the 12-month maximum the floor doubles to €48,000. Few finance teams expect that cost when the clause is first discussed.

There is a way out. The employer may waive the clause within 15 days of the contract ending, and then owes no indemnity. Fifteen days passes quickly during an exit, so decide whether you really want the restriction while the notice period is still running, and put the decision in writing.

Ask that question before the clause goes into the contract, because the answer changes with the role. A non-compete makes sense when a departing employee could take something specific to a direct rival: a book of named accounts, a pricing model, a product roadmap that has not shipped. It makes much less sense for a generalist whose skills are valuable to many employers and whose knowledge of your business goes stale within months.

Run three checks. First, the salary at the likely leaving date: if it will sit in the middle band, find the collective agreement and confirm the function is listed. Second, the realistic exit: if the most likely ending is a restructuring or a dismissal for performance, the clause will not apply at all. Third, the indemnity: multiply half the monthly gross pay by the number of restricted months and decide whether that sum would be paid willingly on the day someone resigns.

A shorter clause is often the better trade. Three months of restriction for an account director costs half of three months’ pay and covers the period in which client relationships are most at risk. A full year doubles the bill compared with six months and adds little if your customers renew on a quarterly cycle.

Remember the waiver too. Keeping the clause in the contract and deciding case by case within the 15-day window gives the employer room to choose, but only if someone owns that decision. Put the date in the exit checklist the moment notice is given or received, so the window is not lost while handover and final pay are being sorted out.

A non-compete that passes every test above still does nothing in two situations: when the contract ends within the first six months, and when the employer dismisses the employee after that point for any reason other than serious cause (motif grave / dringende reden).

In practice the clause therefore matters in two cases only. The employee resigns, or the employer dismisses for serious misconduct. A company that restructures and lets a senior engineer go for business reasons cannot hold that engineer to the restriction, however carefully it was drafted. Boards sometimes assume the opposite, which is why it is worth saying early.

The new short notice rules sharpen the point. For contracts that start on or after 1 August 2026, an employer dismissal during the first six months needs only one week’s notice, which works much like a trial period. A non-compete gives no cover in that window, so it cannot be the tool that protects you during a new hire’s first months.

Separate rules apply to sales representatives and to staff of employers with international activity or their own research department. If the hire falls into either group, have the clause checked against that regime instead of the general one described in this guide.

Ownership of an employee’s output is not settled by one Belgian law covering every kind of creation. Who owns a piece of software, a design, a written method or an invention depends on the kind of work and on what the contract says, so the contract has to say it clearly.

An intellectual property section in a Belgian employment contract normally covers:

• an express assignment of rights in work created in the course of the job, naming the categories that matter to the business, such as source code, designs, documentation and inventions
• a duty to tell the employer promptly about any invention or development linked to its activity
• cooperation with filings and formalities, including after the employment ends
• confidentiality that continues once the contract is over
• a schedule of anything the employee already owns and brings in, so nobody argues later about what came first

Confidentiality often protects a product team better than a non-compete would. It does not stop anyone joining a competitor, but it does cover the source code, customer lists and roadmaps that the competitor would actually want.

Watch the overlap with the non-compete. An employee in the lower band cannot be restrained from joining a competitor, so for that person the assignment and confidentiality clauses carry the whole load. Write them for the work the person will really do: a data scientist needs wording about models and training data, a designer about drafts and unused concepts, a field engineer about customer site documentation. Generic wording copied from another template rarely fits any of them well.

If the hire is a developer in Ghent or an engineer in Liège, settle repository access, side projects and invention reporting before the first commit. Trying to agree those points when someone hands in notice is far harder, and by then the work is already written.

Under the employer of record route, the employment contract is between us and the employee, and our payroll pays them; the non-compete and the intellectual property wording therefore live in that contract. The salary bands, the five conditions and the 15-day waiver apply exactly as described above. Hiring this way does not change Belgian employment law for the person you recruit.

Two documents have to line up. The employment contract assigns rights in the employee’s work to the employer, and the service agreement between you and us should state the route by which those rights reach you. Read the two clauses side by side before the start date. If you want a non-compete, tell us at the offer stage, together with the length and territory you have in mind, so the indemnity can be costed in the same budget as the salary and the two annual Belgian bonuses.

Where the role pays €44,447 or less, we will say so plainly: a non-compete would not bind the employee, and the drafting effort belongs in confidentiality and IP wording. The same candour applies in the middle band when no collective agreement lists the function.

For the wider split of duties under Employer of Record Belgium, see our explainer on the Belgian EOR model. The guide to Belgian contract terms and work regulations covers the rest of the contract, and our page on notice periods and dismissal explains the exit side that decides whether a non-compete ever comes into play.