According to data from the sector federation, Febiac, and the government services, 120,940 new cars were registered during the first quarter of 2025, a decrease of 10.5% compared to 2024. We already showed these results earlier; now is the time to get into the details about who buys what.

In 2023 and 2024, Belgium had an exceptionally large number of professional car registrations, with company cars representing 68.9% and 61.6% of the total market, respectively. In Q1 of 2025, this clearly falls back to a more normal market share of 53.4%.

This means that individual buyer purchases, which had fallen back to 31.1% in 2023 and 38.4% in 2024, have now climbed to 46.6%, almost half of the market again.

Petrol is still number one, but is also getting electrified

This increase in individual buyers makes that the genuine ICE car on petrol is still the most bought with 42.1% of all purchases, a slight increase compared to 2024 (41.8%). The pure electric car (BEV), stimulated by the professional car market, comes in second, with 33.4% or one-third already of the market, an increase of 4.9%. The third winner is the so-called self-charging hybrid (HEV), which now represents 12.6% of the market (+3.4% share increase) and is very popular among individual buyers.

PHEVs have seriously lost ground, their market share halving in Q1 2025, from 14.9% to 7.8%. Perhaps they will recover slightly with the recent changes in fiscal policy, but they will never reach the more than 20% of 2023 again. Diesels are almost disappearing from the stats, with only 3.3% of people still buying a diesel car in the first quarter of the year.

This means that almost 54% of Belgium’s total car market is already electrified, with the progress of BEVs and HEVs compensating for the demise of plug-in hybrids.

Who buys what?

There is a clear distinction between the professional part of the market and the individual buyers. The latter are still very fond of petrol (63.9%), followed by hybrids (HEVs, 19.8%) and BEVs (9.5%).

Pure electric cars are the number one choice in the professional market, with 54.2% of all purchases, followed by ICE petrol cars (24.1%) and PHEVs (11.8%). Hybrids are still not very popular here (6.4% market share), and the once so popular diesel cars almost don’t count anymore (3.5%).

Electrified cars already represent 72.4% of all cars in the professional segment, while their market share for individual buyers has already reached almost one-third (32.7%). Company cars still represent more than four-fifths of the BEVs and PHEVs on the market (86.8% and 80.1% respectively), HEVS are bought mainly by individual buyers (73.1%).

BMW X1 is the most popular car

The smallest BMW SUV continued its conquest of the Belgian car market in Q1 2025 and is the most popular Belgian car, all drives combined (electric, PHEV, and pure ICE). Individual buyers like the Dacia Sandero the most.

Looking closely at the drive mode, the full-electric BMW iX1 is the most popular car in Belgium, followed by the Dacia Sandero (petrol) and the Toyota Yaris (HEV).

In Flanders, the BMW X1 is by far the most popular, followed by two other BMWs (4-Series and X2), and two Volkswagen Group products (Audi Q4 and VW ID.4). In Wallonia, the Renault Group is king, with four cars in the top five: Dacia Sandero (1st), Renault Clio (2nd), Dacia Duster (4th), and Renault Captur (5th), only leaving third place to the Toyota Yaris.

In the Brussels region, the situation is still completely different. Five true urban cars are in the top five, led by the Citroën C3 and followed by the Peugeot 208, the Nissan Juke, the Fiat 600, and the Opel Corsa. Stellantis is master here.