In these parts, Brussels Art Week still flies surprisingly far under the radar. Yet Brussels has long since become one of Europe’s most interesting addresses for contemporary art. From 10 to 13 September 2026, RendezVous – Brussels Art Week makes this art landscape visible. moments spoke with founders Laure Decock and Evelyn Simons about why Brussels’ supposed chaos can be an advantage, why they avoid hierarchies — and why, in the end, art thrives on personal exchange.
Brussels has quietly earned its place on the European art map. Galleries, institutions, artist collectives and experimental project spaces are often only a few streets apart. It is precisely this cultural ecosystem that RendezVous – Brussels Art Week makes visible. Founded in 2024 by Laure Decock and Evelyn Simons, the format is entering its second major edition this year with more than 90 venues.
In Conversation with Laure Decock and Evelyn Simons
You describe Brussels Art Week as the starting gun after the summer break. Why is this particular shared moment in September so important for the city?
Laure Decock & Evelyn Simons: Brussels is cute but quiet over the summer. Especially in August, the cultural scene is taking its annual break, so September offers great momentum to see everyone flocking back into town: tanned, reinvigorated, and with renewed energy for the year ahead. Contrary to fairs, where people stay indoors and stick to their booths, our event takes place in the city itself, and takes the notion of the “rendezvous” rather literally. We put together a programme with exhibitions, performances, events and gatherings at 90+ venues focused per area over the course of four days; inviting locals to rediscover the city in all its variety; and international visitors to make use of this shared celebration to see what Brussels has to offer. For the local artistic scene, it’s stimulating to have two “international moments” in the yearly calendar; there’s us in September and Art Brussels in April; they give people something to look forward to and are an impetus for artists represented by local galleries to put on stellar shows. The city-wide feeling of having a shared event is equally beneficial for a healthy and tightly knit cultural ecosystem.
In Brussels, world-class galleries and young, experimental project spaces coexist. How do you bring these different worlds together on an equal footing?
Horizontality is key. We don’t want to create distinctions between emerging and established, between young talents and renowned names. We don’t do an “off-programme” and all of our events are free for everyone to visit. Instead of creating even more divisions or hierarchy, we want to break down all of these categorisations and layers of importance which we think are outdated and have become obsolete. The Brussels art scene is interesting because all of these different typologies of art spaces co-exist within a rather small perimeter. Even though they might have different needs, they do infuse each other and cross-pollinate. So in our storytelling, all of our participants are simply listed as “venues” — regardless of what they are: a gallery; an auction house; an institution or an artist-run space. However, on the back-end, our role is different. Our stakeholders have different ambitions, needs (as mentioned) and expectations from what Brussels Art Week can bring them. Throughout the year, we therefore organise community building moments where we invite stakeholders for informal lunches at our office, we send out evaluation forms and remain in close dialogue with our participants to understand how we can best cater to everyone. As a result, the scope of services we offer to the various kinds of stakeholders is different.
The central meeting place in Forest relies heavily on circular design and interdisciplinarity. What function does this hub have for such a widely dispersed art week?
The Salon de RendezVous as a concept was born out of our desire to create a platform where we can organise a discursive programme within a unique setting. The Salon itself takes shape through a yearly commission for which we invite an artist (or a collective) to conceive a site-specific installation that comes with its own “script” so to say. Last year, Zoe Williams created The Tip Inn, a temporary bar which drew on notions like decadence and exuberance, and which questions codes around “good taste” and the service economy. This year, Espace Aygo brings their phantasmagorical universe to the former C L E A R I N G gallery space where we’ll be setting up camp. They work mostly with salvaged, found, donated and recycled materials, from which they build hauntingly beautiful objects and environments that challenge our habitual relationship to objects. Existing in their world means rediscovering your surroundings with an almost child-like sense of wonder. They deconstruct the limited functionalities attributed to certain objects to open up a myriad of possibilities of how to engage with, and be in the world. Their installation will travel to Jester in Genk afterwards, where it will be transformed into a duo exhibition with a soon to be confirmed artist, running from 10 October through 10 January. Simultaneously, the commission for the Salon entails that the installation also functions as a scenography: integrating a pop-up bookstore; an info-desk; a bar; a DJ-booth and seating for our Salon Encounters programme. Here, we collaborate with our participating venues to organise talks, events, listening sessions and performances from a trans-sectoral logic. For example, we might invite a curator from an institution to engage in a conversation with an artist showing at an artist-run space and someone from a gallery to engage in a thematic conversation; or we co-host performances with them. The point is to arrive at an exciting programme that can show other aspects to certain artistic practices, and doing that in a — again — very horizontal way, with both established names and up and coming talent.
You emphasise that artists can still live and work sustainably in Brussels. What makes the city so resilient compared to Berlin, Paris or London?
Our city is charming but chaotic. It can be frustrating for some to get used to the dysfunctionality resulting from having 19 different city councils on one territory. We’ve been without a government for nearly two years, which had a serious impact on social and cultural organisations. So its resilience is probably more a side-effect of a governmental structure that slows things down: there is less of a quick turn-around than in other cities. Gentrification also tends to proceed at a bit of a slower rhythm. And as a result, people in Brussels are inventive when it comes to organising things on their own. Within such a fractured landscape, grassroots initiatives easily find windows of opportunity to self-organise. Though we have to be mindful of this hyper-independence — public funding for culture is under a lot of threat which has seen art spaces and clubs close over the past year. It’s necessary to stand strong as an artistic ecosystem to keep resisting this; we can’t only rely on galleries and high-end institutions to keep the arts scene afloat by themselves. The city needs spaces for bottom-up initiatives as well to experiment, offer opportunities to people who aren’t yet very professionally active. With RendezVous, we hope to raise awareness to make policy makers understand yet how vital every aspect of our arts scene is.
How do you balance the deep roots in the local community with the aspiration to attract international audiences?
Similar to what we said above; we have our storytelling and the face of our organisation, which aspires to speak to a wide local audience as well as an international one. And in the back-end, we work on targeted actions to ensure the local community is involved and international art professionals are attracted. We organise guided tours in three languages per area at only 5 euros per head, they are conducted by artists themselves, who are properly briefed on all of our participating venues. Hopping on a tour helps to feel less intimidated whilst walking into a gallery space, if you don’t have experience going there often. This year, we’re also collaborating with Park Poétik, an organisation hosting a yearly summer festival with art in public space and at partner locations, aimed at widening cultural participation through inventive formats of mediation. To attract international art professionals, we invest a lot in press and international visibility; bringing over journalists and have them stay for a couple of days. We also proactively invite international curators and art professionals, and take them on a curated and hosted itinerary so they discover as much as possible. Based on their interests or research focus, we also guide them towards specific shows and artists. Lastly, we teamed up with Art Brussels this year to offer a night at our partner hotel The Standard to our gallerists, for them to invite an international collector into town.
The format is entering the second round. What important insight from the premiere year has influenced the planning for 2026 the most?
We’re a very, very small team. While we (have to) appear on top of our game in the front end, there’s a lot of DIY-mentality, troubleshooting, and many of our close collaborators overextending themselves to birth RendezVous into life. Placing these people first and having a warm atmosphere in the team is key. It was like that last year, and we’re now continuing with many of the same people for this years’ edition. The scope of what we do is 360°, and it’s all intertwined, so once someone in the team understands these complexities, that’s knowledge we want to consolidate by building long-term working relationships.
We also learned that we can’t do it all even if we want to: this is the kind of project that never feels finished. There’s always new opportunities in sight, connections to be made, extra people to be involved, new artists to collaborate with, etc. But we have to grow realistically, work with what is available, and never lose our stakeholders out of sight. The success of RendezVous is a shared endeavour that depends entirely on the enthusiasm and trust of our participants. While we all have a lot on our plates and have to spend much of our time behind screens, we’ve learned that the real momentum comes from showing up: visiting one another, having conversations, and investing in personal relationships. It is this collective energy and sense of connection that will carry RendezVous forward.
RendezVous – Brussels Art Week 2026 takes place from 10 to 13 September 2026. The preview of the Salon de RendezVous with Espace Aygo is scheduled for 9 September, followed by the joint Gallery Opening Night on 10 September.
Don’t miss a thing — we’ll keep you up to date!
Sign up for our newsletter.
