Belgium is the European country divided into the Flemish, Walloon, and Brussels-Capital regions.
These are Belgium’s three constitutional Regions. The Flemish Region occupies the north, the Walloon Region covers most of the south, and the Brussels-Capital Region is a small bilingual area in the center. Brussels is also Belgium’s federal capital.
The Regions are not the same as Belgium’s linguistic Communities. Belgium has Flemish, French, and German-speaking Communities, which handle cultural and language-related responsibilities. The Brussels-Capital Region belongs geographically to neither Flanders nor Wallonia, although it is surrounded by Flemish Brabant and has both Dutch and French as official languages.
A common mix-up is treating Flanders and the Flemish Community as identical in every respect. They overlap substantially, but the Community’s powers also extend into Dutch-speaking institutions in Brussels. Belgium’s federal structure emerged through constitutional reforms beginning in the 1970s, designed to manage the country’s Dutch-, French-, and German-speaking populations.