Belgium national football team: full squad and key players
A new manager, an old core and one breakout forward. Here is Belgium’s full 26-man World Cup squad with every club, the players who matter most, and what Mark van Bommel takes on in August.
Jul 30, 2026
Belgium arrived at the 2026 World Cup written off as a golden generation past its sell-by date, drew their first two games, and then reached the quarter-finals anyway. It was not enough to save the manager. Rudi Garcia left when his contract expired in July and Mark van Bommel takes charge on 15 August, inheriting a squad that still leans on Kevin De Bruyne and Thibaut Courtois but found its best player of the tournament somewhere else entirely. Here is the full Belgium squad, who matters most in it, and where the Red Devils go next.
Belgium’s full squad for the 2026 World Cup
Garcia named his 26 on 15 May 2026: three goalkeepers, nine defenders, six midfielders and eight forwards.
| Player | Position | Club |
|---|---|---|
| Thibaut Courtois | Goalkeeper | Real Madrid |
| Senne Lammens | Goalkeeper | Manchester United |
| Mike Penders | Goalkeeper | Racing Strasbourg |
| Timothy Castagne | Defender | Fulham |
| Zeno Debast | Defender | Sporting CP |
| Maxim De Cuyper | Defender | Brighton |
| Koni De Winter | Defender | AC Milan |
| Brandon Mechele | Defender | Club Brugge |
| Thomas Meunier | Defender | Lille |
| Nathan Ngoy | Defender | Lille |
| Joaquin Seys | Defender | Club Brugge |
| Arthur Theate | Defender | Eintracht Frankfurt |
| Kevin De Bruyne | Midfielder | Napoli |
| Amadou Onana | Midfielder | Aston Villa |
| Nicolas Raskin | Midfielder | Rangers |
| Youri Tielemans (c) | Midfielder | Aston Villa |
| Hans Vanaken | Midfielder | Club Brugge |
| Axel Witsel | Midfielder | Girona |
| Charles De Ketelaere | Forward | Atalanta |
| Jeremy Doku | Forward | Manchester City |
| Matias Fernandez-Pardo | Forward | Lille |
| Romelu Lukaku | Forward | Napoli |
| Dodi Lukebakio | Forward | Benfica |
| Diego Moreira | Forward | Strasbourg |
| Alexis Saelemaekers | Forward | AC Milan |
| Leandro Trossard | Forward | Arsenal |
The spread of clubs tells its own story. Three of the 26 play for Club Brugge and three for Lille, which is a long way from the years when almost every Belgian starter was at a Champions League club.
Who are Belgium’s key players?
Kevin De Bruyne is still the one everything runs through. Now at Napoli and into his mid-thirties, he no longer covers the ground he once did, but he ran the 5-1 win over New Zealand that rescued Belgium’s group campaign and scored in it. There is no obvious successor in the squad.
Thibaut Courtois came into the tournament after an injury-disrupted club season and remains, on his day, among the best goalkeepers in the world. Belgium’s route to the last eight was not built on clean sheets, but it would have collapsed much earlier without him.
Charles De Ketelaere was the story of Belgium’s World Cup. The Atalanta forward scored twice against the United States in the last 16, including a header two minutes after the hosts had equalised, then headed the goal against Spain in the quarter-final that ended a Spanish clean-sheet run stretching beyond 600 World Cup minutes. Four years after his move to AC Milan flopped, he is Belgium’s most in-form attacker.
Romelu Lukaku went to the tournament short of match fitness and still made history. His goal against New Zealand was his sixth at a World Cup, taking him past Marc Wilmots as Belgium’s all-time leading scorer at the competition, and he added a fourth against the USA. He is also the country’s record scorer overall.
Jeremy Doku and Leandro Trossard give Van Bommel two genuinely different wide options. Doku is the one-on-one specialist, Trossard the finisher, and it was Trossard’s brace against New Zealand that turned a nervous group into a comfortable one.
Youri Tielemans wears the armband. He also took the penalty in the 125th minute against Senegal that completed a comeback from 2-0 down, which is about as captain-like as a moment gets.
Who is Belgium’s head coach?
Mark van Bommel, from 15 August 2026. The Belgian federation appointed the 49-year-old Dutchman in late July on a deal that runs to Euro 2028, with Boudewijn Zenden, Maarten Martens and Reinier joining his staff.
Van Bommel played for Barcelona, Bayern Munich, PSV and Milan, and made his name as a coach at Royal Antwerp, where he won the club’s first Belgian league title in 66 years in his debut season. He had been out of a head coaching job since 2023-24.
He replaces Rudi Garcia, who left when his 18-month contract ran out after the World Cup. The Frenchman, previously in charge at Lille, Roma, Marseille, Lyon and Napoli, took over from Domenico Tedesco in January 2025. His tenure was an argument about balance that never quite resolved. Belgium’s group stage was poor, a 1-1 draw with Egypt in which they trailed for almost an hour followed by a goalless stalemate against Iran in which Alireza Beiranvand made seven saves. Garcia kept faith with the older core, the team clicked in the third game, and the knockout run that followed was enough to make the quarter-final exit look respectable without being enough to earn him a new deal.
How did Belgium do at the 2026 World Cup?
They reached the quarter-finals and lost narrowly to Spain, who went on to win the tournament.
Belgium were drawn in Group G with Egypt, Iran and New Zealand, and went into the final round of matches sitting third and facing elimination. The 5-1 win over New Zealand in Vancouver on 26 June flipped everything, and they finished as group winners.
The round of 32 against Senegal in Seattle was the game of their tournament. Habib Diarra and Ismaila Sarr put Senegal 2-0 up inside the hour, Mory Diaw kept out everything Belgium threw at him, and with eight minutes of normal time left the Red Devils were going home. They scored twice late to force extra time and won it through Tielemans’ penalty in the 125th minute.
The last 16 was more straightforward. Belgium beat the United States 4-1 in Seattle to knock the hosts out of their own World Cup, De Ketelaere scoring twice and Lukaku adding a fourth at the death, with Malik Tillman’s free kick the only American reply.
The quarter-final at SoFi Stadium in Los Angeles ended 2-1 to Spain. Fabian Ruiz put the European champions ahead in the 30th minute, De Ketelaere headed in a Castagne cross ten minutes later, and Mikel Merino turned in a loose ball two minutes from full time to settle it. Our full report on Spain’s win over Belgium has the detail.
Belgium’s best World Cup finish remains third place at Russia 2018.
Who is Belgium’s all-time top goalscorer?
Romelu Lukaku, who has held the record since 2017 and has extended it well past anyone else in Belgian football. He is now also the country’s leading World Cup scorer with six, having gone past Marc Wilmots’ five during the 2026 tournament.
Behind him the list runs through Belgium’s golden generation and its predecessors, with Eden Hazard, Wilmots and Bernard Voorhoof among the names near the top.
What comes next for Belgium?
The UEFA Nations League, and Van Bommel could hardly have asked for a harder start. The 2026-27 league phase draw, made in Brussels on 12 February 2026, put Belgium in Group A1 alongside France, Italy and Türkiye.
Four of those six matches fall in an extended international window running from 24 September to 6 October 2026, with the last two played between 12 and 17 November. Group winners and runners-up go through to quarter-finals in March 2027.
After that comes Euro 2028 in the United Kingdom and Ireland. The qualifying draw is scheduled for Belfast on 6 December 2026, so Belgium’s route there will not be known until the Nations League phase is done.
For more squad breakdowns in this series, see our guides to Croatia, Qatar and Cape Verde.