As part of our Language of Soccer World Cup series, The Athletic is speaking to supporters of all 48 nations competing at the 2026 edition to capture their unique football culture, distilled into a single phrase. You can read the articles in one place here.Tous Ensembles — All TogetherIt will not sound like a harmonious choir inside Seattle’s Lumen Field when Belgium’s national anthem is sung before their World Cup opener against Egypt there on June 15. The Belgian fans’ voices will clash, the rhythms will interfere and some will be singing completely different words than others.“We don’t even have a national anthem in one language,” says Paul Van den Brande, 60, who travels from his home in the city of Antwerp to stadiums all over the world following Belgium’s team — nicknamed the Red Devils.“There are the Dutch fans singing Flemish and the French fans singing French, but that’s the only barrier in the travelling support: language. There is unity.”It is a rare idiosyncrasy that a national anthem can be sung in three different languages — La Brabanconne, the French version, De Brabanconne, the Dutch one and, less commonly, Die Brabanconne, the German edition, belonging to one per cent of the population — but Belgium is a particularly blended country.Belgium fans sing its national anthem(s) before their 2018 World Cup semi-final against France (Jasper Juinen/Getty Images)A federal state of just 11 million people, they punch well above their weight when it comes to international football — and internal politics.The country comprises three regions and 10 provinces. You have the Flemish population to the north of the country in Flanders, bordering the Netherlands, and the French-speaking population down south in Wallonia, next to France. Then there is the German-speaking community of East Belgium, adjacent to the Belgian-German-Dutch border tri-point.Around 59 per cent of the population speaks Dutch, mainly people in Flanders, while French is spoken by 40 per cent. A significant portion of the Flanders population feel that they subsidise Wallonia, and this has fuelled support for a breakaway from Belgium into an independent state.“During our Red Devils games, these moments are maybe the only time when Belgium is united as a single country,” says Michael Vandersteen, president of the country’s biggest fan group, De Bemvoort.“In normal life, that feeling is not part of our people, I’m afraid. Shared pride for our country is what we are missing. I would even say the lack of that feeling among the players was part of us not winning that big prize (in football) in these years. It was the slight difference between winning and not winning, in my eyes.”Belgium’s motto on its coat of arms reads ‘Unity makes strength’, but it is the football songbook that best captures that ideal.When Belgian fans travel to North America for this World Cup, the most commonly-heard song will be ‘Waar is dat feestje? Hier is dat feestje!’, which translates as ‘Where’s the party? Here’s the party!’ and, although it has Dutch lyrics, it is also sung by those from the south of the country. The reverse is also true for the slogan heard at every single national-team match — ‘Tous Ensembles, Tous Ensembles’, which means All Together, All Together, chanted by the Dutch speakers. Belgium’s supporters travel as one. The passion is exemplified by a tight-knit, hardcore group of around 300 fans who go to every game, but they are representative of the wider country.They organise a fan-walk to every away match, and at the 2018 World Cup in Russia had 10,000 supporters who came together. They also try to have a game against their counterparts from the opposition country and even played a match in Red Square, Moscow, during that tournament. They won, with a little help from Hernan Losada, an Argentinian midfielder who had just retired as a player with Belgian second-division club Beerschot Wilrijk.