Kanal is 95% complete and on schedule but plans to slash its budget mean conversation around its opening have moved from ‘when’ to ‘if’
A year before its scheduled opening on 28 November 2026, building works at Kanal, a new contemporary art museum in Brussels, are running on time.
Housed in a remodelled former Citroën garage on the north-western edge of the city centre, the centre is 95% complete. Curators are putting the finishing touches to an opening show that will feature works by Matisse, Picasso and Giacometti on loan from the Centre Pompidou in Paris. Trilingual wall texts in English, Dutch and French have already been signed off.
With 12,500 sq metres of exhibition space over five floors, an architecture centre, restaurants and live performance venues, the museumwill be bigger than Tate Modern in London, the Palais de Tokyo in Paris and the Guggenheim Bilbao. The investment reflects a will to turn the administrative capital of Europe into a cultural destination in its own right.
But in recent weeks, the conversation around Kanal’s opening has moved from “when” to “if”. A year and a half on from Belgian regional elections, a functioning government for the semi-autonomous Brussels-Capital region is still nowhere in sight. The only certainty seems to be the predicted austerity measures and mooted plans to slash Kanal’s budget by more than half.
