Tucked inside thousands of holding companies (modest names, minimal websites, a handful of employees) sits one of Europe's most concentrated pools of private capital. Family offices. Quiet, disciplined, and largely invisible to anyone without access to the right data.
We decided to change that.
The Belgian Family Office Monitor 2026 (Dutch) is the first quantitative mapping of this market at this scale. After screening thousands of Belgian holdings, of which approximately 200 showed family office characteristics and 99 were retained after strict selection, we identified 99 family offices managing a combined €43.3 billion in equity and €34.6 billion in financial fixed assets.
Here is what we found.
The market is bigger than anyone thought
In March 2024, De Tijd published a list of 73 family offices with €23 billion in equity. That was the starting point for our research. It turns out it was only part of the picture.
By systematically extending and validating that universe through openthebox data, we found a market nearly twice as large. Not because De Tijd was wrong. Because this market is structurally designed not to be found.
There is no legal statute for family offices in Belgium. The definition is broad. And the families themselves value their privacy highly. What they do publish is exactly what openthebox is built to read: annual accounts, board mandates, shareholder structures.
The numbers
Other sector totals: securities €6.7bn, cash €0.9bn, real estate €0.6bn.
75% report a positive net result. Total reported profit across the sector: €4.4 billion.
Extreme concentration at the top
The wealth distribution in this market is striking. Fourteen family offices, including Cobepa, SPDG, FG Bros, Frère-Bourgeois Holding and Korys, each hold more than €1 billion in equity and together control 59% of all equity. Eight offices (8% of the total) manage 46% of all financial fixed assets.
At the other end, 37 family offices hold less than €100 million in equity and represent just 4% of the total.
This is not a market with a healthy middle. It is dominated by a small number of very large players, surrounded by a long tail of smaller vehicles at various stages of professionalisation.
The sector tripled in twelve years
For 66 family offices with complete historical data, combined equity grew from €7.4 billion in 2012 to €23.6 billion in 2024, a 218% increase, compounding at 10.1% per year. Financial fixed assets followed: from €6.1 billion to €20.1 billion (+225%, CAGR 10.3%).
The growth is not uniform. Mid-sized offices (€100M to €500M FVA) are currently growing fastest, with 79% posting gains and a median increase of +12.7% between 2022 and 2024. But over the long term, the largest offices compound at 13.0% per year. Nearly three times faster than the smallest (4.6%).
Scale begets scale. The largest family offices are not just bigger. They grow structurally faster.
On current trajectory, total equity could reach €79 billion by 2030 and cross €100 billion around 2032.
Conservative by design
If there is one financial characteristic that defines Belgian family offices, it is capital discipline.
The median debt/equity ratio is 0.10x. For every euro of equity, there is ten cents of debt. 74% operate with a D/E below 0.3x. 27% are essentially debt-free. Five of the largest offices (SPDG, Frère-Bourgeois Holding, Sensinnovat, Korys Investments and Echlin Invest) carry essentially no net debt.
When cash and securities are included, the sector as a whole is net debt-free. 54% of family offices have a net cash position. This is wealth built over generations and managed to survive them.
Where the money sits
Equity is concentrated in Brussels and Flemish Brabant, together accounting for €20.7 billion, 48% of the total. Brussels leads on average size (€852M per office). Flemish Brabant follows at €440M.
Brussels city and Ixelles together concentrate €12.4 billion across 10 offices. Ghent combines professional investment platforms with industrial family vehicles. The West Flemish corridor from Kortrijk through Roeselare to Waregem reflects a strongly industrial heritage.
One data point stands out: 43% of family offices founded since 2020 are West Flemish. New money is being formed in South West Flanders at a pace that is not slowing down.
A network that runs on trust
Using the openthebox network analysis engine, we mapped connections between the 99 offices based on shared portfolio companies, co-investments and board overlaps, to two degrees of separation.
Around 12 offices form an active core that repeatedly appears across the same funds and portfolios. VF Capital, Alychlo, Pamica, Diepensteyn and Saffelberg are the most consistently connected. The connective tissue is not boardroom relationships. It is shared investment funds. Smartfin Capital, Volta Ventures and Newton Biocapital are the primary junctions. Smartfin Capital II alone acts as an indirect bridge for 64 of the 100 most-connected individuals in the data.
Direct board-level relationships between family offices are rare. When they exist, they run through family members, not professional directors. Only 8 individuals sit on the boards of two or more family offices.
This is a world where trust is the infrastructure. The network is larger and denser than any formal data source reveals.
New money: 14 family offices founded since 2020
The most actionable finding for anyone building relationships in this market: 14 offices were founded since 2020, together accounting for €11.8 billion in equity. The largest are FG Bros and Frère-Bourgeois Holding (2021, generational split of the Frère family), Quva Invest (2022, Pascal Vanhalst), Echlin Invest and TNFO (2021, the Thermote families) and the three Straco entities (2024, Gino De Raedt/Frederica Verheyden). Peruna (Jan Claerbout), founded in 2024 with €510 million in starting capital, is the most recent addition to this group.
These are structures that are newly active, not yet locked into established advisory relationships, and deploying capital now.
What this means if you work in financial services
If you work in private banking, M&A advisory, legal services, fund management or real estate, this market is your client base. It is large, growing at 10% per year, conservatively run, and profitable.
It is also largely invisible to conventional market intelligence tools.
openthebox built the Belgian Family Office Monitor because making this market legible is good for everyone in it: for families looking for co-investors and trusted advisors, and for professionals who want to approach the right people with the right proposition.
The market was always there. Now it is visible.
The data exists. Annual accounts are filed. Board mandates are public. Shareholder structures are registered. What was missing was the layer that connects it all.
That is what openthebox is built to do. And the Belgian Family Office Monitor is what it looks like when you apply that to an entire market.
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