Getting a Belgian driving licence from scratch

If you have come from India, or from most places outside the EU, your licence does not transfer. You start again from zero — theory exam, driving school, provisional licence, practical test — and it takes far longer than anyone tells you. Mine took about eighteen months. Here is the whole path, and where the time actually goes.

First: can you simply exchange it?

Some non-EU licences can be swapped for a Belgian one without any exam, because Belgium has an arrangement with that country. Many cannot, and an Indian licence is in the second group — there is no exchange, and no shortcut. Check where your own country stands before you assume either way, because the answer decides whether the rest of this page applies to you at all.

The four gates

Nothing here can be reordered. Each gate unlocks the next, and the long, invisible one is the third.

Gate 1 · The theory exam

Fifty multiple choice questions, on a computer, roughly thirty seconds each. It is the scoring that catches people out, not the difficulty.

In Flanders the exam is set in Dutch. English is available, either through an interpreter reading the questions aloud or through headphone audio depending on the centre, and it has to be arranged when you book rather than on the day.

Gate 2 · The driving school

Twenty hours with an accredited school, and this is by far the most expensive part of the whole exercise. Mine ran as ten two-hour sessions across about six weeks.

Somewhere around the ten hour mark the instructor decides whether you are safe to practise on your own. That judgement is the gate to the provisional licence, so it is worth asking early and often where you stand against it.

Gate 3 · The provisional licence, and the clock

The provisional licence is what lets you practise without paying for an instructor, and it is valid for eighteen months. That sounds generous. It is not, because this is also the stage with no appointments in it, nothing forcing your hand, and therefore the one people quietly lose a year to.

• You may drive alone on it, within the licence’s conditions
• Or with a companion who has held a licence for at least eight years
• Three months of practice is the minimum before the practical exam
• Let it lapse and renewal comes with strings — solo driving is off the table unless you buy more lessons or register a qualified companion

No car of my own, so I practised on a car-sharing subscription, weekday evenings and weekends. It worked, but budget for it: those hours add up quietly alongside what the school already cost.

Gate 4 · Exam morning

Two tests, back to back. The risk perception test comes first — four or five video clips of about a minute each, where you react to a hazard developing: a cyclist, a pedestrian, a car doing something stupid. You need six out of ten. You do not find out how you did until after the practical, which is its own small cruelty.

The practical then runs thirty to forty minutes in the driving school’s car, with the instructor, the examiner, and an interpreter if you need one.

Before you pull away, the examiner asks about the car

• Tyre condition
• Where the oil, water and coolant live
• Show the lights, high beam, indicators, horn and wipers

Then two manoeuvres, drawn at random

Parallel parking · forward parking · backward parking · reversing · a U-turn. Full marks means doing it in the fewest moves, so practise them as sequences rather than as improvisation.

After that, a route: motorway, suburban streets, junctions, priority rules, roundabouts, signs and speed. It is conducted in Dutch in Flanders, so if you need the interpreter, book them with the slot.

If it goes wrong

You can rebook within a couple of weeks. But after two failures you are required to take six more hours with a school before you are allowed to sit it again — which is both the expense and the delay, so it is worth spending an extra paid hour before the second attempt rather than after it.

Collecting the licence

Pass, and the last step is administrative: apply at your commune, and the card is ready about a week later. After eighteen months of this, it is a startlingly boring ending.

Five things I would tell anyone

1. Check the exchange question first. If your country has an arrangement, none of the rest of this applies to you.
2. Manual, not automatic. The restriction is permanent and the regret is common.
3. Do not guess on the theory. Minus one for wrong, minus five for serious. Skipping beats guessing.
4. Book the practical the day you become eligible. The eighteen month provisional is the only deadline anyone gives you, and it is the one people miss.
5. Arrange the interpreter when you book, not on the day.