Belgium recorded 78,697 new cancer diagnoses in 2024, up 1.4% from the previous year and the first time the total has exceeded 78,000, according to figures published on Thursday by the Belgian Cancer Registry.
The increase was not uniform across the country. Diagnoses rose by 1.3% in Flanders to 47,341 cases and by 2.1% in Wallonia to 25,661, while Brussels recorded a slight fall of 0.6%, from 5,728 to 5,695 cases.
Men remained more affected than women, accounting for 54.3% of new diagnoses, compared with 45.7% for women. The gap, however, is gradually narrowing.
The most common cancers were unchanged. Among men, prostate cancer remained the most frequently diagnosed, followed by lung and colorectal cancers.
Among women, breast cancer was by far the most commonly diagnosed, ahead of lung and colorectal cancers.
The registry highlighted prostate cancer as a notable trend. After several years of rising risk, apart from 2020, the risk of developing the disease appears to have stabilised since 2023 and even fallen slightly, although estimates for 2025 still point to a limited increase.
The overall risk of breast cancer remained broadly stable, but patterns differed by age. It fell among women aged 50 to 69, the target group for the organised screening programme, but increased among women aged 70 and over.
Lung cancer trends also continued to diverge. Incidence kept falling among men, while the number of diagnoses among women continued to rise.
Survival chances for lung cancer patients improved for both sexes, the registry said.
Pancreatic cancer, which generally still carries a poor prognosis, continued to increase among both men and women. Liver and testicular cancers, non-melanoma skin cancers and tumours of the central nervous system also rose.
By contrast, the risk fell for several other cancers, including stomach cancer in both men and women, uterine and ovarian cancers in women, and bladder cancer in men.
Created in 2005, the Belgian Cancer Registry has compiled diagnosis data since 1999 in Flanders and 2004 across the whole country. The data is used to guide health policy, screening programmes and scientific research.
