India Belgium defence talks took place in New Delhi on Thursday, with Defence Minister Rajnath Singh holding a bilateral meeting with Theo Francken, the Minister of Defence and Foreign Trade of Belgium. Defence sources said the two sides reviewed the entire spectrum of defence and industrial cooperation between the two countries, a readout later confirmed by the Ministry of Defence.

Inside the India Belgium defence talks agenda

Both ministers agreed to expand bilateral ties through a defence cooperation dialogue, high-level visits, and training and capacity building. The framing was broad rather than programme-specific, with no individual platform, contract or timeline named in the readout.

That keeps Thursday's meeting at the level of a stocktaking exercise rather than a signing event, a pattern common to first-visit bilaterals before deliverables get named in later rounds of talks.

Maritime security enters the Indo-Pacific conversation

The two leaders also discussed issues of regional peace and security. According to the readout, both sides acknowledged the need for maritime security collaboration in the Indo-Pacific, a theme that has recurred across several of India's European and Gulf-facing bilaterals this year.

India has leaned on a similar formulation with several partners this year, converting service-to-service dialogue into standing maritime frameworks the way it did at the 25th India-UK Defence Consultative Group meeting and the earlier strategic partnership framework built with the UAE. Both ministers reiterated that the India-Belgium partnership rests on shared values of mutual trust and respect, language that has become a fixture of India's Indo-Pacific-facing bilaterals.

Belgium's near eight-decade tie with India

Belgium was among the first European nations to establish diplomatic ties with independent India, in September 1947. The relationship has been described on the Indian side, per the Ministry of External Affairs, as resting on shared commitments to the rule of law, federalism and pluralism, themes that carried into Thursday's talks.

A defence meeting inside a wider prime ministerial visit

Thursday's meeting was conducted on the sidelines of talks between Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever in New Delhi. The visit is De Wever's first to India since he took office in early 2025, and it runs from September 2 to 4, with a Delhi leg followed by engagements in Mumbai covering the diamond, ports and logistics sectors.

Defence Minister Rajnath Singh has kept a similarly full bilateral calendar through the year, including a visit to Sri Lanka for a defence MoU review last month, and the Ministry of Defence has not indicated whether Thursday's meeting will be followed by a formal joint statement.

Part of a dialogue already underway

Thursday's meeting builds on an India-Belgium Strategic Dialogue held in Brussels in July, co-chaired by External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar and Belgium's Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Maxime Prevot, which covered clean energy, mobility and pharmaceuticals. The defence track discussed on Thursday sits alongside that wider process, and alongside a broader India-EU engagement that has picked up pace since the conclusion of the India-EU Free Trade Agreement negotiations earlier this year.