Belgium caps the employer dismissal notice at 52 weeks, but only for contracts signed from 1 July 2026

Belgium has long been one of the more expensive places in Europe to end an employment contract, because the statutory notice an employer must give grows with seniority and, under the rules in force until now, never stops growing. A law adopted in May 2026 changes that with a hard ceiling, but only for people hired from 1 July 2026 onward.

What the law caps

The reform sets a maximum of 52 weeks on the statutory notice period an employer must give when it dismisses an employee. Under the notice schedule, the period stops increasing once the employee reaches 17 years of service; beyond that point it stays at 52 weeks rather than climbing further with each additional year. Employee-side notice is untouched: someone who resigns still gives at most 13 weeks.

The catch: only new contracts

The cap applies to employment contracts that enter into force on or after 1 July 2026. Anyone already employed under a contract that started before that date keeps the existing rules, which carry no statutory ceiling at all. So for years to come an employer can be running two regimes at once: capped notice for its recent hires, and uncapped, still-growing notice for everyone taken on earlier. This is not a change that reduces the exit cost of your current staff.

What the uncapped schedule still looks like

Under the post-2014 single-status rules that still govern pre-July-2026 contracts, employer notice climbs steadily with tenure: it reaches 62 weeks at 20 years of service and then adds one more week for every additional year, with no upper limit. A 30-year employee is owed 72 weeks; a 35-year employee, 77. That is well over a year of notice, or an equivalent indemnity paid in lieu when the employer ends the contract on the spot instead of having the person work it out.

Why this lands on the cost of a hire

Notice, or the indemnity that replaces it, is money the employer funds when the job ends, and in Belgium it has been one of the larger exit costs in Europe precisely because it kept growing with tenure. Capping it at 52 weeks makes the worst-case cost of parting with a new hire knowable in advance for the first time, which over a long relationship can matter more than a difference in the headline salary. For everyone already on the books, the old open-ended schedule still applies, so the two costs sit on the same payroll for a long time yet.

This is the cost of ending a Belgian job, which runs on a separate axis from the cost of running one. Our free guide to the real cost of hiring in Belgium breaks down the employer-side load on a salary, from social contributions to holiday pay and the 13th month, so you can see the ongoing figure; treat the notice rules above as the exit line stacked on top of it.