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Brussels · Venue

Ancienne Belgique

A flexible, red-walled Brussels concert house with a 2,000-capacity Main Hall and a 280-capacity Club for emerging acts.

Upcoming shows
241
Address
110 Boulevard Anspach, 1000 Bruxelles
Phone
02 548 24 84
Next show
Wed, 30 Sept 2026
Official siteDirections
Ancienne Belgique in Brussels

About Ancienne Belgique

Ancienne Belgique, usually AB, is Brussels’s 2,000-capacity concert house, centred on a red Main Hall whose two gallery levels give the standing floor a theatre-like frame. The room changes shape with the bill: full-standing, seated-theatre, hybrid Flex, Box and Ballroom formats all operate in the same hall. That adaptability suits a loud rock bill, a seated songwriter set, or an electronic night built around a larger floor crowd.

A music hall remade

AB’s name began in 1931, when 22-year-old Liège entrepreneur Georges Mathonet took charge of the entire building. The site had already lived as a brasserie, revue venue and dance hall; Mathonet expanded the music hall to roughly 1,300 seats and built a variety-show format around singers, comics and warm-up acts. The operation closed in 1971 after fire-safety costs and unsuccessful subsidy requests squeezed the business.

The room today

A new AB emerged after the Finance Ministry bought the premises in 1977 and assigned it to Brussels’s cultural communities. Noise complaints led the city council to withdraw the operating licence in 1980; renovation began in 1982, and AB reopened on 23 December 1983 with restricted hours and a broadened programme including Dutch-language and traditional music. A further rebuild brought the expanded venue back to central Brussels in 1996, with the Club isolated acoustically from the Main Hall.

Built for discovery and scale

AB programs established names alongside young, local and international artists, across genres and languages. The Main Hall offers balconies, standing room and unassigned seats, while the upstairs Club holds 280 standing and has its own bar. The Club functions as the smaller discovery room for emerging bands, experimental projects, hip-hop, singer-songwriters, house DJs and punk bills; the Main Hall carries the larger, format-flexible shows.

Sources

  1. The story of AB — Ancienne Belgique
  2. Our spaces — Ancienne Belgique
  3. Explore AB’s Club programme — Ancienne Belgique
  4. Ancienne Belgique, Brussels: renovation of the Steenstraat building — Government of Flanders

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