Hundreds of young people took to the streets of Brussels on Saturday, 17 October 2026, against rising education costs. Gândul reported the protest in the Belgian capital; agencies and local press describe the same thread: from Brussels-Central towards Midi, a march of several hundred, then tear gas at the Bourse and water cannon. This account stays with Brussels and Liège. It does not recap other capitals.

Belgium's interior minister, Bernard Quintin — not „Qujintin”, as Gândul spelled it — spoke of „pure violence” after the clashes in the capital. An AFP reporter saw police use tear gas against youths throwing bottles and other objects near the Bourse. In Liège a group of about 250 people was, according to reports, peaceful at first, then met water cannon in Place Saint-Lambert. The figure of 500–600 participants on the Central–Midi axis appears in French-language Belgian press; it is not an official federal police tally.

The mobilisation of young people in the French-speaking community has lasted weeks. Secondary-school pupils contest a savings plan of about 500 million euros in francophone education by 2029, against the backdrop of Bart De Wever's austerity package. Saturday is not the 30,000-strong union strike of 9 October: it is a separate day, with a different route and a different balance sheet.

There were arrests; inquiries are open. We do not publish names of minors and we do not treat a detention as a conviction. Police used gas and water; some demonstrators threw objects. Who did what, in which minute, belongs in the file, not in a morning news story.

The cost of education — fees, transport, materials — is the demand that brought people onto the street. Violence at the end of the march is another chapter, which the minister names as such, and which unions, on earlier days, separated from their own rally. Until a release with verified numbers, we hold to what can be held: the place, the day, the theme, and the fact that police intervened at the Bourse and at Midi.

Image: Smiley.toerist, Brussels-Midi / Brussels South station, 2024, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons; archive of the station, not the 17 October 2026 march.

Sources consulted: Hundreds of young people protested in Brussels against rising education costs - Gandul; Clashes in Brussels and Liege, 17 October - Euronews.