Kanal Museum Brussels Centre Pompidou, Belgium modern art building, Citroën factory Belgian contemporary architecture

Kanal Museum in Brussels

29 January 2026

Design: EM2N, noAarchitecten and Sergison Bates architects
Location: Brussels, Belgium, Europe

render © Secchi Smith

Images and photos © Secchi Smith, © Atelier Kanal, © Mike Hooks and © CIVA Collections, Brussels

Kanal Museum Brussels Building, Belgium Centre Pompidou

Kanal, brussels’ world-class museum for modern and contemporary art and architecture, announces opening programme in collaboration with centre Pompidou

render © Secchi Smith

40,000 sqm former Citroën factory to be transformed by international architects EM2N, noAarchitecten and Sergison Bates architects

Kanal cultural complex to include 5 floors of gallery spaces, performance and film screening auditoria, workshops and community spaces, cafes, rooftop restaurant/bar, in-house bakery and shops

Opening exhibition ‘A truly immense journey’ to feature more than 350 works from the collection of the Centre Pompidou, the Kanal collection and Belgian and international public and private collections

Turner Prize-winning British art/design/architecture collective Assemble to create a 700 sqm indoor playground in the form of an imaginary landscape of hills, volcanoes and distant planets

photo © Atelier Kanal

The programme was announced today for the inaugural season of Kanal-Centre Pompidou, Europe’s largest museum development, which will open to the public in Brussels on 28 November 2026. It will be the city’s first world class museum of modern and contemporary art and architecture.

photo © Mike Hooks

Housed in the transformed 40,000 sqm former Citroën factory, under one sweeping roof, Kanal features 5 floors of state of the art gallery spaces. It also includes a 7 metre high basement gallery, dedicated spaces for the new Kanal Architecture programme (formerly CIVA, the city’s Centre for Architecture, Landscape and Urban Planning), performance and film screening auditoria, workshops and community spaces, cafes and rooftop restaurant/bar with views across the city, an in-house bakery and shops, with generous indoor circulation spaces open free to everyone all day, and leading into a new public square.

photo © CIVA Collections, Brussels

The transformation of the iconic Citroën factory to create Kanal has been carried out by an international consortium of architects, EM2N (Zurich), noAarchitecten (Brussels) and Sergison Bates architects (London), working together under one name Atelier Kanal.

Reflecting a long-term collaboration with Centre Pompidou, one of the highlights of the opening programme will be A truly immense journey, a major exhibition featuring more than 350 works drawn principally from the collection of the Centre Pompidou, as well as the Kanal collection and Belgian and international public and private collections. This will include works by modern icons such as Lygia Clark, Sonia Delaunay, Alberto Giacometti, Natalia Goncharova, Wifredo Lam and Henri Matisse, alongside contemporary international and Brussels-based artists including Sammy Baloji, Edith Dekyndt, Aglaia Konrad and Hana Miletić. A truly immense journey inaugurates a series of long-term exhibitions in collaboration with Centre Pompidou.

As well as the Collection exhibition, the inaugural programme includes a series solo and group exhibitions, three major commissions for Kanal’s public spaces, and dance, film and music events. These will be presented alongside a wide range of events, workshops and performances created by the people of Brussels, welcoming citizens, organisations, collectives and communities to appropriate and inhabit large parts of the building for their own projects.

render © Secchi Smith

Kanal Architecture will be a new home for the CIVA collection, the city’s renowned archive of architecture, landscape architecture and urbanism, with dedicated spaces for public exhibitions, extensive library and areas for quiet study and events. The inaugural exhibition, Right to the city – Right to the future, documents the story of the modernisation of Brussels, frequently traumatic. The city was regarded as a pioneer of urban change in the 1960s, effected not just by professional architects and planners but also by activists and citizens, and involved large scale demolition, most notably the predominately working-class North quarter, the neighbourhood of Kanal, under the so-called Manhattan Plan.

Amongst the special commissions by Kanal for the opening is a 700 sqm playground on the first floor where everyone aged four and up can build, explore and experiment freely, created by Turner Prize-winning British-based collective, Assemble. Taking the form of an imaginary landscape of hills, volcanoes and distant planets, the playground will be open all day free to visitors.

Yves Goldstein, Managing Director, Kanal, said today: “With Kanal-Centre Pompidou, Brussels has the potential to become the hub for contemporary European creation. We are adding a – missing, and undoubtedly essential – piece to this city’s exceptional artistic ecosystem. There is currently no other project like it in Belgium or in Europe.”

Kasia Redzisz, Artistic Director, Kanal, said: “Kanal opens a new chapter in the cultural history of Brussels and beyond. Conceived as a museum from the outset, the institution emerges in a city marked by artistic intensity and institutional absence: a place where contemporary practices have long flourishedwithout a museum dedicated to modern and contemporary art. Kanal is founded in response to this condition – not as a corrective, but as a proposition.”

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Laurent Le Bon, President, Centre Pompidou, said: “Centre Pompidou is more than honoured to connect its collection and teams with such an ambitious institution. Kanal and Centre Pompidou have worked closely and very fruitfully on this project which forefronts our common values: pluridisciplinarity and cultural openness.”

Design: EM2N – https://www.em2n.ch/en/work.html, noAarchitecten – https://noaarchitecten.net/ and Sergison Bates architects – https://sergisonbates.com/en

render © Secchi Smith