How Brussels Ended Up With a City Full of Duplicate Images — And What It's Now Trying to Do About It

Brussels' network of public-facing digital platforms is littered with thousands of duplicate, mismatched, and legally ambiguous images — stock photos recycled across incompatible databases, neighbourhood photographs filed under wrong arrondissement codes, and heritage shots used simultaneously by conflicting departments. The city's digital communications unit, operating under Brussels Informatique, formally flagged the problem in a January 2026 internal audit, triggering a structured replacement programme that is now entering its operational phase.

The timing matters. Brussels is midway through a broad push to consolidate its fractured digital infrastructure under the Smart City Brussels initiative, a project that links data flows across the nineteen communes. Duplicated image assets are not merely an aesthetic annoyance — they create legal exposure under EU copyright frameworks, slow page-load times on citizen-facing portals, and undermine the visual coherence that the Perspective Brussels urban planning agency has spent three years trying to impose on public communications.

How the Problem Built Up Over a Decade

The roots go back to at least 2014, when individual commune administrations — Ixelles, Molenbeek-Saint-Jean, Schaerbeek and others — each began digitising their own photographic archives without coordinated metadata standards. The Région de Bruxelles-Capitale ran its own parallel system through VisitBrussels, the tourism body headquartered on Rue Royale, which maintained a separate image library oriented toward promotional use. Meanwhile, the Brussels Environment agency, BRUXELLES ENVIRONNEMENT, was building its own visual database focused on green spaces like the Forêt de Soignes and the Parc du Cinquantenaire.

None of these systems talked to each other. A photograph of the Grand-Place taken in 2017, for instance, might exist in four separate databases under four different filenames, with four different licence attributions — some correct, some not. When the city's web teams pulled images for neighbourhood consultation pages or the Brussels Mobility portal, they drew from whichever internal library was most accessible, compounding duplication with each new site launch.

The January 2026 audit by Brussels Informatique identified more than 34,000 image instances across the main regional web estate that were flagged as potential duplicates or as carrying incomplete or expired licence documentation. That figure does not include assets held at commune level, which were outside the audit's formal scope.

What the Replacement Programme Actually Involves

The replacement effort, running through the end of 2026, is structured in three phases. The first — now complete — involved automated deduplication across the central content management system used by the regional administration on the Boulevard du Régent. The second phase, currently active, requires human review of roughly 8,000 images that the algorithm flagged as ambiguous. The third phase, beginning in September, will establish a unified Digital Asset Management system that all nineteen communes will be invited — though not compelled — to connect to.

Urban visual identity is not a trivial concern in a capital that hosts the European Parliament on the Rue Wiertz and the NATO headquarters out in Evere. Brussels projects itself internationally through thousands of web pages and documents each year, and a photograph of, say, the Atomium used simultaneously in a climate consultation and a parking tariff notice with conflicting copyright notices creates real institutional embarrassment, not just clutter.

The cost of the DAM system contract, awarded through a public procurement process in March 2026, has not been made public, though procurement notices filed with the Belgian Official Gazette confirm the project is classified under IT infrastructure expenditure for the Région de Bruxelles-Capitale's 2026 budget cycle.

For residents and local journalists who use the public image libraries — VisitBrussels offers a media portal with downloadable assets for accredited press — the practical advice is straightforward: any image downloaded before April 2026 from the regional portal should have its licence documentation re-checked against the updated terms now published on the Brussels Informatique website. The September DAM launch is expected to provide a single search interface replacing the current scatter of portals. Whether individual communes adopt it voluntarily will shape how comprehensively Brussels finally gets its visual house in order.