Belgium Domains: .be, .brussels and .vlaanderen

Belgium has one official country code extension, .be, and Atak Domain also sells .brussels and .vlaanderen. .brussels covers the capital and the Brussels-Capital Region, .vlaanderen covers Flanders, and both are separate top-level extensions. The same registry, DNS Belgium in Leuven, operates all three, so a single organisation sets the rules and runs the infrastructure for every Belgian extension sold here.

Yes, anyone can register a .be domain without a Belgian address or local agent; you need a working email address and, if your name is selected, a completed identity check. Nationality and residence do not matter either: individuals and companies from any country register in their own name on the same terms, names go to the first applicant, and no documents are collected at registration.

DNS Belgium selects a share of new .be registrations for an identity check, and a selected name stays inactive until the check is complete. The name remains registered to you but cannot serve a website or email in the meantime. A probability algorithm picks the names to check, weighing the words in the name, the contact details, the email address and the name servers. Verification runs manually, with official documents such as an identity card for individuals or a notarial deed of incorporation for companies, or online through systems such as Itsme, eID and Onfido. Registrations that are never verified may be terminated.

No, .brussels has no residency rule: apart from reserved names, any party may register any available name. No Brussels address, Belgian company, local representative or documents are required, and names are allocated first come, first served. The extension is run by DNS Belgium, the .be registry, and the zone is DNSSEC-signed. The terms give the registry no duty to warn you before expiry, so keep track of the renewal date yourself.

.vlaanderen is the online identity of Flanders, made for local authorities, cultural institutions, associations and businesses that want to show their tie to the region. It entered the root zone on 18 June 2014 under an ICANN agreement dated 6 February 2014, with DNS Belgium as registry, and held 6,151 registrations on 14 August 2026. Its naming rules carry one quirk: a name may not have hyphens in the third and fourth positions at once, and country codes, country names and names of international bodies are reserved.

Yes, inside Belgium: for Google, .be is a strong signal that a site is aimed at Belgium. .be is not among the country codes Google treats as generic. Belgium's three languages need no extra domains: Google recommends a separate URL for each language version, so Dutch, French and German pages can sit on one .be domain in folders such as /nl/, /fr/ and /de/, linked with hreflang annotations. .brussels and .vlaanderen add no country signal of their own, because Google announced in 2015 that it handles new city and regional extensions like gTLDs. The extension alone earns no rankings; content in your audience's language still decides.

Choose .be to reach all of Belgium, .brussels for a business in the capital and .vlaanderen to put your tie to Flanders first. A web shop shipping across Belgium fits .be, while a Brussels restaurant fits .brussels. To protect a brand, a common approach is to make .be the main address and redirect the local extension to it.

Search for your name on the domain name search page, choose the extension and complete the order with an email address you actually read. If DNS Belgium selects your new .be name for identity verification, complete the check with documents or through an online system such as Itsme, because the name stays inactive until it succeeds. You can move an existing .be name through the domain transfer page; in .be a change of registrar starts a new registration year and the fee for the previous period is not refunded, so time the transfer close to expiry.