Riots rock Brussels as mayor condemns Bruges hooligans

The wave of violence that engulfed Brussels on Sunday and Monday following a major football match was spurred by racist hatred for Belgium’s multiethnic capital, the city’s mayor said.

Supporters of Club Brugge, wearing black hoodies, rampaged on Sunday through Molenbeek — a Brussels neighborhood famous for its large migrant and predominantly Muslim population — smashing shop windows and assaulting people.

“They hate Brussels because it’s a multicultural city,” Brussels Mayor Philippe Close told POLITICO on Tuesday.

“For them, the image of Brussels is a hellhole,” he said. “These hooligans have no place in Brussels. They are not welcome in my city.”

Local police said they had arrested 63 people and worked “until late into the night” to quell the disorder, with some Brussels locals fighting back. One Bruges fan was shot in the leg, the Brussels prosecutor’s office confirmed.

Authorities and football governing bodies condemned the rioting, which continued on Monday night with “revenge” attacks by Brussels youths around King Baudouin Stadium, at Brussels’ biggest train station and in the center of the city, Brussels police chief Michel Goovaerts told local media. According to the authorities, local rioters hijacked a pro-Palestinian protest on Monday to create disorder in the city.

Goovaerts did not respond to POLITICO’s request for comment.

Belgian interior ministry spokesperson Olivier Schotte told POLITICO that Sunday’s football violence “was shocking and unacceptable,” and that authorities were working to identify the perpetrators.

The Belgian Pro League said it was “crystal clear that a number of hooligans used the cup final as a pretext to commit organized crime in Brussels.”

Club Brugge denounced “so-called supporters who ran riot in the streets of Brussels and around the stadium” in a statement Monday, and said it would “be cooperating with the police in order to identify those involved.”

‘So angry’

A crime wave has plagued Brussels in recent months, with 11 shootings reported in the first six weeks of 2025 alone, resulting in two deaths and several injuries.

The surge in violence has reignited criticism of local authorities. Brussels has had no regional government since last June, with parties locked in a political stalemate, and critics say the impasse has hampered a unified response to the city’s problems.

“How is it possible that these hooligans, who are very well known by the police department and also by the football clubs, can have the tickets for these matches?” Close asked. “And this is why I’m so angry. It’s always the same story.”

Close argued that while violence between supporters of rival teams is not new, Club Brugge was particularly aggressive as it was motivated by “extreme right-wing” ideology.  

“Everybody in Belgium knows this,” Close said. 

Some victims of the violence in Molenbeek on Sunday night also criticized the police for taking too long to intervene. One person, who was beaten while trying to protect his 73-year-old father when hooligans invaded their family-run DIY store, told Belgian broadcaster RTBF that law enforcement did not show up for 20 minutes.

Belgian Interior Minister Bernard Quintin said last month he was finalizing a long-awaited plan to merge the capital’s six police zones into a single, organized command in a bid to better coordinate responses — and would present it this summer.

“We will move quickly on the merger of police zones, with the first implementation in Brussels,” his spokesperson Schotte told POLITICO. “The recent events have shown the urgent need for a single command and a faster police response force when necessary.”

Christophe Vandeviver, research professor of criminology at Ghent University, said the hooligans were troublemakers, regardless of their alleged political ideology.

“These are groups that want to riot. Whether they’re right or left wing, they are motivated by the fact that they want to create chaos, create havoc in Brussels,” he said.

“Anonymity and being in a large group makes people feel invincible. It’s easy to be tough in a group,” he added, noting the propensity of hooligans to wear black clothing and scarves around their faces to evade authorities.

For these reasons, he said, it’s important that the authorities identify rioters and that football clubs ban them from attending matches. 

Brussels’ Mayor Close was in total agreement.

“Football teams and the football league need to take very hard sanctions against these groups of supporters,” he said. “They know who they are.”