Five paid training days a year, by law
Since the Labour Deal of 3 October 2022 you have an individual right to training days that does not depend on your manager's goodwill, your sector or any approval scheme. It is a right to paid time rather than to a training budget, which is the whole point of understanding it properly: it removes the objection that costs you the course, and it leaves the fee as a separate conversation.
A right to time, which is the objection most people actually lose on
Ask a Belgian employer to fund a course and you usually meet two objections rather than one: the money, and who covers your work while you are learning. The second quietly kills more requests than the first, and it is the one this right answers, because the days are already yours by law. Since the law of 3 October 2022, an employee in a company with twenty or more staff has an individual right to five training days a year, paid, and an employee in a company with ten to nineteen staff has one. It sits on top of whatever your sector already arranges, and unused days accumulate across a five-year cycle rather than expiring each December. Nothing in it looks at who runs the training: your employer chooses the provider freely, foreign and online included, and can be invoiced directly. What it does not do is pay the fee, so treat it as the half of the problem it solves and pair it with a route that handles the other half.
You are a private-sector employee in a company with at least ten staff. From twenty staff upwards the individual right is five days a year; between ten and nineteen it is one day. Below ten, the individual right does not apply, and the fallbacks in the last section are where to look instead.
Part-time and partial years are pro-rated rather than excluded. The entitlement scales with your working time and with how much of the year you were employed, so a four-fifths contract carries four-fifths of the days rather than none.
Nobody outside your company decides this. There is no application to a public body, no register your training has to appear in, and no approval of the school. The right is anchored in law and administered inside the company.
Your employer keeps a say in which training fills the days, and that is worth knowing before you ask. The days are yours; the choice of what to do with them is a conversation. Arriving with a specific course, dates and a reason it serves your work is what turns that conversation into a yes.
Frequently asked questions
My employer says the five days are for internal training. Are they right?
They keep a say in which training fills the days, so a preference for internal courses is not unlawful. What it is not is a rule that the days must be spent internally, and nothing in the right restricts your employer to a particular provider or format. The practical move is to argue on the objective rather than on the entitlement: show which line of the company training plan your course serves, and offer a format that costs fewer days. That is a much shorter conversation than a disagreement about the law.
I work four days a week. Do I still get five days?
You get a pro-rated share, so a four-fifths contract carries four-fifths of the entitlement rather than none, and the same applies if you joined part-way through the year. It is worth checking your recorded balance rather than calculating it yourself. Unused days accumulate across a five-year cycle, so someone who has never claimed one may be sitting on considerably more than a single year's worth, and walking into the conversation with the real number is a stronger opening than a rounded-down guess.
Does the training have to be recognised or the school approved?
No. This right contains no provider condition at all: your employer chooses the training freely, including foreign and online providers, and we can invoice them directly. That is genuinely unusual among training schemes and it is the reason this route works for a course like ours where several public ones do not. What your employer will care about instead is relevance to your work, which is what the written request in step 4 is for.
Can I use the days and also have the fee paid?
Yes, and that is the outcome worth aiming at, since they are two different decisions rather than one. The days are yours by law; the fee is a budget question your employer answers separately, often from a training budget that already exists. Raise both in the same conversation with the dates and the amount in front of you, and if the fee is refused you still keep the days, which changes what you can do with a course you fund another way.
My company has eight employees. Is there anything for me?
Not this right, which starts at ten staff, and that is a threshold in the law rather than a judgement about your situation. Two things stay open regardless of company size: your employer can still fund training as an ordinary business purchase, with no scheme to be admitted to, and you can deduct what you pay yourself as actual professional expenses if the training deepens the work you already do. The Belgian map linked above sets out which of those fits your case.
Get personalised advice
Need help figuring out how to finance your bootcamp from Belgium? Book a one-on-one consultation with an education specialist. We can walk you through instalment plans, discounts, and common Belgium routes such as employer sponsorship and regional training incentives (where applicable). You’ll get guidance that fits your goals and clear next steps to move forward with confidence.
