Belgium Women

Twice now Belgium have found a way to stay at the top of European women's basketball rather than pass through it: the Belgian Cats won EuroBasket in 2023, beating Spain in the final, and held on to the title again in 2025. Neither run arrived out of nowhere. Belgium had spent decades finishing in the bottom half of continental tournaments and missed every Olympics between 1952 and 2012 bar a single appearance in 1976, so the bronze medal at EuroBasket 2017 marked a turning point — it followed Olympic qualification for Rio the year before, the team's first Games since 1976, and it pushed Belgium up to 28th in the world rankings. A fourth-place finish at the 2018 World Cup, achieved by beating France in the quarter-finals, and a second EuroBasket bronze in 2021 sustained that momentum before the 2023 title arrived.

Belgium reached the podium again at the Paris Olympics in 2024, finishing fourth, and Meesseman opened 2026 by setting a new national and personal record with 27 points in a single World Cup game. The federation behind the team, known as Basketball Belgium, dates to 1933; the national side itself played its first international match in Budapest in 1950, an 8th-place finish at that year's EuroBasket that gave little hint of what was to come. The Cats have no fixed home ground, splitting qualifiers and friendlies between the Lotto Arena in Antwerp and the larger Sportpaleis, with matches against the Netherlands often staged in Ieper instead.

Mike Thibault, who arrived with a WNBA championship already on his record, now coaches the team through to the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics. But the name most associated with this era remains Meesseman, a five-time EuroLeague champion whose calm has carried Belgium through both continental finals.