Required documents
Getting your paperwork in order can feel unfamiliar if you are used to a single, universal registration process back home. What you need can be prepared before you leave, with a bit of forward planning.
This page covers the core documents to bring with you, and the legalisation and translation steps that make foreign documents valid in Belgium.
Overview
Which documents you need can vary by nationality, visa type and life situation, but a few of them come up again and again across almost every procedure - your visa application, municipality registration, work, and banking.
Getting these ready, legalised and translated before you leave home saves you from chasing paperwork from a distance once you have already moved.
Documents to bring from home
- Valid passport - check that it stays valid well beyond your planned stay, since some visa types require several months of extra validity.
- Birth certificate - needed for municipality registration and several other procedures.
- Marriage or partnership certificate - if you are married or in a registered partnership, especially important if you are joining a partner already in Belgium. See Bringing your family to Belgium.
- Diplomas and academic transcripts - needed if you plan to work in a regulated profession or continue studying, and useful for diploma recognition later on.
- Driving licence - if you plan to drive. See Registering your car for what happens once you are here.
- Criminal record extract - required for some visa categories and certain jobs, so check if it applies to your situation before you travel.
- Passport-sized photos - a small thing, but you will likely need several across different applications.
- Proof of health insurance - a European Health Insurance Card if you are coming from the EU, or private travel or health insurance to cover you before you are registered with a Belgian health insurance fund. See Choosing a health insurance fund.
- Employment contract, letter of admission or enrolment confirmation - proof of why you are coming to Belgium, often requested alongside your visa or during registration.
- Proof of accommodation - a rental contract, or a declaration from whoever is hosting you, is often requested when you register your address. See Registering, moving or leaving your address for the full process.
- Bank statements or proof of financial means - some visa categories ask you to show you can support yourself, so check whether this applies to your case.
- International driving permit or a certified translation of your driving licence - useful if your licence is not in Latin script or from a country without a direct exchange agreement with Belgium.
Legalisation and translation
Documents issued outside Belgium usually are not automatically valid here. Before they can be used, most need to be legalised - officially confirmed as genuine, either through an apostille or a full legalisation chain, depending on your home country - and then translated by a sworn translator into the language your municipality or authority requires.
This is far easier to arrange while you are still in your home country than after you have moved, since it usually involves your own national authorities as well as the Belgian embassy or consulate. Each Belgian embassy publishes its own legalisation page with country-specific steps - the embassies in, for example, the United Kingdom, the United Arab Emirates and Indonesia each list this separately, so search for your own country's Belgian embassy website and look for "legalisation".
One thing that catches many people out: for a lot of procedures, the copy you submit must have been issued no more than 6 months ago. An older certificate, even a correctly legalised and translated one, can be refused - which means requesting a fresh copy and starting the whole legalisation and translation process again. Time this carefully, so your documents are still recent enough when you actually need to hand them in.
Good to know: legalisation can take several weeks depending on your country, so start this process before you leave home. Trying to sort it out from Belgium, while also waiting on foreign authorities, is far more complicated.
Sources
- Legalisation of documents - Foreign Affairs
- Legalisation - Belgian embassy in the United Kingdom
- Legalisation of documents - Belgian embassy in the United Arab Emirates
- Legalisation and transcription of documents - Belgian embassy in Indonesia
