Brussels Airport adds border control positions as EES slows arrivals checks

Brussels Airport announced on 23 October 2026 that it will install eight additional manual border control positions in the arrivals area in December, a 66% increase. The airport says this means manual border control capacity at arrivals will have doubled within 12 months.

Six additional e-gates, ordered from the federal police in May 2026, are due to be delivered in early 2027. According to the airport, they will increase e-gate capacity at arrivals by 50%.

The investment responds to the European Entry/Exit System (EES), which the airport says has made checks on non-Schengen passengers considerably slower. During the morning peak, processing an arriving passenger who needs a visa takes two to three times longer than before. Waiting times improved slightly in August but rose again in September, and the airport notes that waits of two to four hours are common at many European airports.

In 2025 the airport also bought 60 pre-registration kiosks, but they are not yet operational because of technical problems with the government's suppliers.

The airport backs calls from ACI Europe and Airlines for Europe for optimised biometric checks, a widely usable pre-registration app that also works in Belgium (the airport says only Sweden and Portugal currently have one) and flexibility to suspend biometric registration temporarily when queues grow too long. Whether those changes will be adopted, and how quickly queues will ease, is not yet established; non-Schengen travellers should allow extra time at arrivals.