How safe is Belgium?
Officially recorded crime for every municipality - 564 in total - with rates per 1,000 residents, on an interactive map you can zoom from the whole country down to street level.
Across all 564 municipalities of Belgium, officially recorded crime ranges from about 2.0 per 1,000 residents in Horebeke to 85.3 in Sint-Gillis - about 43 times as high. A typical municipality sits at around 11.1 per 1,000. The two lists below show the five lowest and the five highest; the interactive map holds the full ranking, and you can zoom past the municipality level to see how the picture changes from one area to the next.
Safest areas in Belgium
- Horebeke - 2.0 crimes / 1,000 residents
- Meix-devant-Virton - 2.8 crimes / 1,000 residents
- Amel - 2.9 crimes / 1,000 residents
- Sint-Laureins - 3.4 crimes / 1,000 residents
- Kortenaken - 3.6 crimes / 1,000 residents
Highest recorded crime in Belgium
- Sint-Gillis - 85.3 crimes / 1,000 residents
- Brussel - 81.8 crimes / 1,000 residents
- Liège - 63.3 crimes / 1,000 residents
- Elsene - 53.2 crimes / 1,000 residents
- Sint-Joost-ten-Node - 48.4 crimes / 1,000 residents
Popular cities in Belgium
Heading to one city? These guides answer “is it safe?” with the same official data, broken down by neighbourhood:
Read the numbers honestly. Rates are per 1,000 residents, so city centres and tourist areas look worse than they feel - many visitors, few residents. Recorded crime is not the same as how safe a place feels, and recording practices differ between countries, so compare within Belgium only.
All 565+ municipalities, covering 15 tourist-relevant offence types from pickpocketing to burglary. Whichever area you land on, the rate is counted per 1,000 residents, so you can weigh a capital city against a quiet town on the same scale - as long as both sit inside Belgium. Use the search box to jump to a place by name, or the locate button to find the municipality you are standing in right now.
Open the interactive map of Belgium →