With an average of more than 60,000 passengers boarding on weekdays, Brussels’ 3 main stations remain the busiest train stations in Belgium. This was revealed by figures from the public railway company NMBS/SNCB, which used a new and more accurate counting method.
The contrast with the quietest station could not be greater: in Hourpes in Hainaut, home to about 180 residents, only 7 train passengers are counted per day.
The NMBS/NSCB has approximately 554 stations and stops. Of these, 100 have an average of fewer than 100 boarding passengers per day on weekdays, but there are currently no plans to close any of them. On the contrary, another one – Braine-Alliance in Eigenbrakel – will even be added in December.
Brussels-North remains on top
Brussels-North remained the country’s busiest station in 2025, with 61,362 passengers boarding on weekdays, including those transferring between trains. The top 3 remained unchanged, with Brussels-South (60,647) and Brussels-Central (60,595) in second and third place, respectively.
Next are Ghent-Sint-Pieters (56,779), Antwerp Central (38,681), Leuven (37,379), and Mechelen (23,621). Liège-Guillemins, in 8th place, is the first Walloon station in the ranking, with a weekday average of 22,991 boarding passengers.
On Weekends, Brussels-South is the busiest station in the country (with 32,509 departing passengers on Saturdays, for example), just ahead of Ghent-Sint-Pieters (31,905)
Number of stations remains stable
In addition, there are 17 stations where an average of more than 10,000 passengers board each weekday, including Namur, Bruges, Antwerp-Berchem, Ottignies, Charleroi-Central, Brussels Airport, Kortrijk, Mons, and Denderleeuw.
There are also nearly 100 stations where, on weekdays, fewer than 100 boarding passengers are counted per day. Of these, 7 have a maximum of 15 boarding passengers: Vijfhuizen in Erpe-Mere (15), Callenelle (14), Pry (14), Harchies (12), Aalst-Kerrebroek (10), Beignée (8), and Hourpes (7).
The number of stations has remained stable in recent years, hovering between 550 and 554, but it is the ticket windows – not the stations – that have been disappearing at a faster rate in recent years.
According to the new 2026-2029 transportation plan, which takes effect in mid-December, no station closures are planned – a politically sensitive issue, because most of the smaller stations are in Wallonia. In Eigenbrakel, Wallonia, another one—Braine Alliance—will even be opening at the end of December
New counting method
NMBS/SNCB conducts passenger counts every October. For many years, the counts were done manually. Still, now that virtually all tickets and passes are scanned, the company has enough data to reliably count passenger numbers digitally for each station.
This method also provides a much more representative picture, with an average figure for an entire year rather than numbers based on a single week, according to NMBS/SCNB.
Last year, NMBS/SNCB carried 207,8 million paying passengers: an average of 740,431 per day on weekdays, 306,888 on Saturdays, and 264,090 on Sundays.
In April 2026, NMBS recalculated the 2024 figure using the new, more accurate method, arriving at 205.6 million instead of 245 million. In 2019 (before the pandemic), the figure was 230 million according to the new method.
