How many training days are you legally required to provide?

The number of mandatory training days depends on the size of your company. That size is not a headcount: the law counts full-time equivalents. It is your average employment in full-time equivalents over a fixed reference period — the fourth quarter of the second-to-last year (n-2) and the first three quarters of the year after it (n-1) — based on your declarations to the RSZ/ONSS, and that average is fixed for a two-year period. A company with 22 people on the payroll can therefore stay below the threshold of 20 once some of them work part-time. The federal minimum rules are:

• Fewer than 10 employees: no federal minimum.
• 10 to 19 employees: at least 1 training day per year per full-time employee.
• From 20 employees: at least 4 training days per year per full-time employee in 2023, raised to 5 days per year from 2024.

Important: these are minimums that apply unless your sector provides otherwise by collective agreement. The actual number of training days for your company therefore depends on your joint committee — how to look it up is explained in our guide on joint committees, and the corresponding training offer per sector is in the sector overview.

If an employee does not work full-time or for the full year, the number of days is calculated pro rata based on the employment fraction and the duration of employment.

The law makes no distinction in value between formal and informal training: both count in full towards the individual training right, as long as the training is work-related.

• Formal training: a course, training session or traineeship with a predefined programme and an instructor or training provider, such as technical training, a language course or software training.
• Informal training: learning that is less structured but still functional, such as coaching on the work floor, targeted self-study or onboarding by an experienced colleague.

Wellbeing training — for example on safety or psychosocial wellbeing — also qualifies. One exception is easily missed: days your employee takes under Belgian paid educational leave (betaald educatief verlof) or Flemish training leave (Vlaams opleidingsverlof, VOV) do not count towards the individual training right. According to the FPS Employment those schemes are entirely separate from it, including VOV taken on joint initiative. Training that is not work-related does not count either: it must relate to the exercise of a professional activity. In the sector overview you will find, per sector, the range of formal, bookable training courses you can use to meet this right.

If an employee does not use all the training days they are entitled to in a given year, those days do not expire immediately. They carry over as a training credit that can build up over several years.

That credit does not expire day by day. The law works in fixed five-year periods: the first runs from 1 January 2024 to 31 December 2028. At the end of such a period the balance of available training credit is set to zero — collectively, for all employees at once, regardless of when the days were built up. An employee who only joins in 2027 therefore also loses their outstanding days on 1 January 2029. The period carries an objective as well: across those five years a full-time employee must have taken an average of at least five training days per year (an average of at least one day with 10 to 19 employees, or the average that follows from your sector's collective agreement). So track take-up per employee: leaving it until 2028 leaves you with a stack of days that then disappears.

The federal minimums — 1 day with 10 to 19 employees, 5 days from 20 employees — are a floor. Sectoral collective agreements can make deviating or supplementary arrangements at joint committee level on the number of training days, how they are taken up or the target groups. The correct number for your company therefore does not follow from the federal rule alone, but from its combination with the collective agreement of your joint committee.

That room is bounded, though. A sectoral collective agreement can change the number of days, but it cannot reduce it below two training days per year, nor reduce it where more than two days were already granted at sector or company level. And what the agreement provides must remain a right per employee: a purely collective training right — an average across the whole group of employees instead of a right per person — no longer has a legal basis according to the FPS Employment, and so does not satisfy the individual training right. So always check the collective agreement of your joint committee, and ask your sector fund which arrangements apply specifically to your sector. The corresponding training offer is available via the sector overview, for example for electricians or the metal industry (white-collar employees).

You do not have to work this out yourself, by the way: Smart Lions automatically calculates the individual training right per employee, taking your company's situation into account — that calculation is already included in the free tier.

Employers with at least 20 employees must inform their employees in writing each year about their individual training right. That means telling them in black and white how many training days an employee has that year and, where applicable, how much training credit is still outstanding.

This information duty is not a non-committal recommendation: it is part of the same law of 3 October 2022 that introduces the training right itself. So document the communication just as you track the take-up of training days.

Keeping track of balances and the annual communication becomes considerably easier with a tool that calculates this automatically: Smart Lions tracks the training days and outstanding training credit per employee, with a free tier.

The individual training right and the training plan obligation are two separate obligations from the same legislation, and they complement each other. Employers with 20 or more employees must not only provide the 5 training days per full-time employee, but also adopt a written training plan each year — by 31 March at the latest — in which those training efforts are given concrete form.

In practice, the training plan is the instrument with which you translate the individual training right into concrete training per role or team. More on that plan obligation, the deadlines and the procedure to follow can be found on our guides page.

The Federal Learning Account (FLA), the federal registration system for training days, was abolished as of 1 January 2026. The registration obligation for employers has lapsed with it entirely. Important: this only affects the registration instrument. The individual training right itself — federally at least 1 or 5 training days per full-time employee, depending on your company size and sector agreement — and the training plan obligation remain fully in place.

Data already registered remains available for consultation via mycareer.be until 31 December 2026, after which it will be permanently deleted. An individual learning account has been announced from 2027 as a successor, but it is not yet regulated by law. Until it exists, you remain responsible for tracking and documenting training days per employee yourself.

Want to know which training courses count towards the individual training right in your sector? Browse the training offer per sector in the sector overview.

The correct number of training days differs per sector and per employee. Smart Lions automatically calculates the individual training right per employee, registers completed training and links everything to your training plan — the calculation is already included in the free tier. You start for free, whatever your company size; more extensive plans from € 10 per month (excl. VAT). Via this link you can also test the full application free for 30 days.

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Sources: Individual training right – FPS Employment · Training plans – FPS Employment · The Federal Learning Account will soon disappear – FPS Employment · Volta – sector fund for electricians (PC 149.01) · Mtech+ – sector fund for the metal and technology industry