If you are building a game studio in Belgium and looking for an incubator or co-working space, your options are limited. Three organizations currently serve this function, spread across Flanders and Wallonia. That is a small number for a country with an active game development scene, and the reasons behind it say something about how the Belgian ecosystem works.
Game development in Belgium has historically been a distributed activity. Studios work from home offices, university campuses, or generic co-working spaces not specifically designed for games. The three dedicated options listed here represent the exceptions: places built with game developers in mind, or at least with game developers as a target audience.
The three active hubs
Flanders Game Hub
Location: Kortrijk
Website: flandersgamehub.be
Flanders Game Hub is the closest thing Belgium has to a purpose-built game industry hub. Located in Kortrijk, the same city as Howest’s Digital Arts and Entertainment program, it benefits from direct proximity to one of Europe’s top game education pipelines. The hub provides office space, networking opportunities, and business support tailored to game studios. Its location is not a coincidence: Kortrijk has become the center of gravity for Flemish game development precisely because DAE graduates tend to stay in the area or return after gaining experience elsewhere. Flanders Game Hub gives those studios and freelancers a physical home base.
The hub also serves as a meeting point between new graduates, established studios, and the broader Flemish creative tech sector. For small teams that have outgrown a spare bedroom but are not ready to lease a full office, it fills a practical gap.
Game Nest
Location: Ghent
Website: gamenest.be
Game Nest is a co-working space in Ghent designed specifically for indie game developers. The space provides desks, meeting rooms, and a community of developers working on independent projects. Ghent has a strong creative and tech scene, and Game Nest taps into that by offering a low-barrier workspace for solo developers and small teams who want to be around other people making games.
The indie focus is deliberate. Game Nest does not position itself as a startup accelerator or a pathway to venture capital. It is a place to work, share feedback, and avoid the isolation that comes with independent development. For many indie developers, the biggest challenge is not funding or tools but the loneliness of working alone on a project for months or years. A shared space with peers working on similar problems helps with that.
Azimut
Location: Charleroi
Website: azimut-entreprendre.be
Azimut is a general-purpose startup incubator in Charleroi, Wallonia. Unlike Flanders Game Hub and Game Nest, it is not specifically built for game developers. It supports startups across sectors, providing workspace, mentorship, and connections to the Walloon business ecosystem. Game studios can and do use Azimut, but they share the space with companies in health tech, logistics, fintech, and other industries.
For Walloon game developers, Azimut fills a gap that no games-specific organization currently occupies in the region. Wallonia has funding through Wallimage and education through HEPL and HEAJ, but it does not yet have a dedicated game hub equivalent to what Kortrijk or Ghent offer. Azimut is the next best thing: a professional incubation environment that accepts game companies even if it was not designed around them.
Why only three?
The small number of dedicated game spaces in Belgium reflects several realities. First, the Belgian game industry is still relatively small. A 2023 industry survey counted roughly 120 active game companies in the country. Not all of them need or want physical co-working space, especially in an industry where remote work was common long before the pandemic made it mainstream.
Second, Belgium’s geography works against concentration. The country is compact enough that a developer in Brussels can reach Kortrijk, Ghent, or Liege within an hour or two by train. That convenience reduces the pressure to build hubs in every city. Developers tend to cluster around existing institutions (universities, funding bodies, associations) rather than around physical workspaces.
Third, running a game-specific co-working space is not an easy business. The target audience consists mostly of small indie teams and solo developers with limited budgets. Generic co-working brands like Silversquare, Regus, and WeWork already offer flexible desk space in most Belgian cities. A games-only space has to offer something beyond a desk and wifi to justify its existence, whether that is community, industry connections, or specialized equipment.
What is missing
The most obvious gap is in Brussels. The capital has Games.Brussels as a trade association and several general co-working options, but no dedicated game development space. Given that Brussels is home to a growing number of studios and sits at the intersection of Belgium’s two main language communities, a Brussels-based game hub could serve developers who do not identify primarily with either the Flemish or Walloon scenes.
Wallonia is the other gap. Azimut in Charleroi accepts game companies but does not cater to them specifically. A dedicated Walloon game hub, perhaps connected to the education programs in Liege or Namur, could strengthen a region that already has public funding and university programs but lacks a physical gathering point for its developers.
For now, Belgian game developers who want a dedicated workspace have three choices. Flanders Game Hub in Kortrijk for industry-connected office space, Game Nest in Ghent for indie-focused co-working, and Azimut in Charleroi for general startup incubation. The rest of the country’s developers work from home, from cafes, or from generic office spaces, the same way most of them always have.