Studying in Belgium from Chad.

The steps to study in Belgium from Chad

1. 1Obtain an admission in a recognised institution in French-speaking Belgium, lodging the application yourself with your own contact details.
2. 2Have the Chadian baccalaureate recognised through an equivalence with the Equivalence Service of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, at the reduced fee of EUR 150.
3. 3Have the certified true copy of the diplomas drawn up by the municipal administration or town hall, have it legalised by the Chadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then lodge the Belgian legalisation request with TLScontact Yaoundé.
4. 4Create an account on Visa On Web, lodge the type D long-stay visa application there, then book an appointment through the channel in force at the time of lodging, TLScontact Yaoundé or the embassy's e-Appointment.
5. 5Lodge the file in person at the Yaoundé centre, biometric data included, then collect the passport there after the decision.

What changed on 1 September 2026

Until 31 August 2026, a resident of Chad lodged their long-stay visa application in Ouagadougou, with the service provider Capago, and had their Chadian documents legalised by the Belgian Embassy in Burkina Faso. Since 1 September 2026, those competences have been transferred to the Belgian Embassy in Yaoundé, in Cameroon: the long-stay visa applications and the legalisation requests of residents of Chad are now handled there, through the service provider TLScontact. The official visa competence table of the SPF Affaires étrangères (Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs), in its version of 2 September 2026, designates Yaoundé as the competent post for Chad.

The short stay, for its part, does not move: Schengen visa applications are still lodged in N'Djamena with the French embassy, which represents Belgium. An honorary consulate of Belgium exists in N'Djamena, now attached to Yaoundé, but the SPF recalls that the competences of an honorary consulate are more limited than those of an embassy and that you must approach the embassy in the first instance; honorary consulates in particular do not hold the legalisation competence.

Admission and equivalence: what calendar from Chad?

For a first university enrolment, a Chadian candidate is a non-resident candidate from outside the European Union: the admission form opens in mid-February and is lodged by 31 March at the latest for an academic year starting in September of the same calendar year, with an application fee of EUR 200, non-refundable, deducted from the registration fee by some universities but not by all. Quota-limited programmes fall under a separate procedure, with its own deadlines.

Chad has no sheet of its own with the Equivalence Service: it falls under the "countries with reduced fees" sheet, which brings the administrative fees down to EUR 150 instead of EUR 400, non-refundable. The file includes the baccalaureate diploma and the transcript as certified true and legalised copies, proof of access to higher education in Chad, an identity document and a motivation letter in French. Lodging opens around mid-November and closes on 15 July, postponed to 14 September where the results are proclaimed after 10 July (article 5 of the royal decree of 20 July 1971), on official proof of the date of proclamation, dates to be confirmed on equivalences.cfwb.be, and processing takes from 4 to 12 weeks at the very least. An equivalence carrying restrictions is frequent for a diploma from outside the European Union: they are lifted by passing the DAES maturity examination.

One point of language deserves attention: French is one of the two official languages of Chad and documents issued in French do not have to be translated, the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles requiring a translation only outside French, German, Dutch, English, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish. A document issued in Arabic, on the other hand, would call for a sworn translation. The rule is settled on the document itself, not on the country: we check the language of issue of the diploma before building the file.

The student visa at TLScontact Yaoundé

In accordance with the Visa Code, every applicant must go through TLScontact: only holders of official passports, family members of Union citizens covered by Directive 2004/38/EC, humanitarian applications and duly justified emergencies may approach the embassy directly. The long-stay application starts with the creation of an account on Visa On Web. The embassy page has not yet added Chad to the list of countries of residence whose long-stay circuit it describes, and it mentions there an appointment booking on e-Appointment: the appointment channel, TLScontact or embassy, is to be checked on the Yaoundé embassy page and on the TLScontact website at the time of lodging, and we have it confirmed before booking. The recording of biometric data is compulsory for any student visa application, except for holders of a Belgian State scholarship and for participants in an exchange programme or in inter-university mobility.

The centre is located in the Platinium Building, rue école publique Bastos, opposite the Hôtel Le Diplomate, in Yaoundé. It opens Monday to Friday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., hours that apply to appointments as well as to the return of passports and to legalisation requests, and it closes on thirteen public holidays a year. For a resident of Chad, this means a trip to Cameroon, with a schedule to be set against the validity of the passport, the date of the appointment and the later collection of the document.

The Yaoundé centre displays an "Appointment booking: scam alert", and the TLScontact alert page states what it targets: "Beware of third-party representatives and intermediaries who sell appointments for the lodging of your visa application", the appointment having to be booked only on the TLScontact website, which reserves the right to refuse entry to anyone who obtained it through an intermediary. Our position is the same: the candidate books their appointment on the service provider's website, lodges their own application with their own contact details and appears in person; the only sums owed to the authorities are the visa fee, the administrative fee and the service fees. We prepare, check and orchestrate the file.

Legalising your Chadian documents and financing your studies

Chad is not party to the Hague Apostille Convention and the official legalisation tool of the SPF Affaires étrangères (Federal Public Service Foreign Affairs), when asked about Chad, answers that the document must be legalised with the competent Belgian embassy or consulate. The chain applicable since 1 September 2026 is therefore: legalisation by the Chadian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then lodging of the legalisation request with TLScontact Yaoundé, which forwards it to the embassy. The embassy states that all documents to be legalised must be lodged with its external partner and that foreign documents intended for Belgium are legalised electronically, then consultable through Legalweb with the file number. Its detailed page has not yet been rewritten after the transfer: we have the exact chain confirmed by the post before any lodging. The consular fee is EUR 25 per document since 1 August 2026, the legalisation of an annex 32 costing the same amount. Watch out for the first step: the procedure published by the post accepts a true copy issued by the authority that issued the document, whereas the Equivalence Service accepts only the true copy drawn up by the municipal administration or town hall and refuses those from the school, the police, a notary, the post office or the Belgian embassy. For the document intended for the equivalence, it is the requirement of the Equivalence Service that prevails: the copy is made at the municipality.

As for the cost of studies, the 2026-2027 enrolment fees amount to a full rate of EUR 1,194 (decree of 5 June 2026, published in the Moniteur belge on 24 June 2026). Non-assimilated students from outside the European Union add in principle a supplementary contribution of EUR 4,175 per year. Chad appears in annex 1 of ARES circular no. 2026-001 of 12 February 2026, the list of least developed countries: its nationals are exempt from it and still owe the enrolment fee of EUR 1,194. The circular applies to universities and the ARES may update its annexes. Chad, however, is not among the ARES partner countries: that body's scholarships are not open to Chadian candidates, and the financing is built otherwise, through a blocked account or a guarantor. According to the latest breakdown published by the Conseil des rectrices et recteurs (CRef, table 1.3.1, 2021-2022), 13 students of Chadian nationality were enrolled in the six universities of the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles.

Why get support from Chad

As for the many international students we support, our role starts with avoiding the wrong turn: working with the post that is actually competent, with up-to-date information, and not with an embassy page that the transfer of competences has made obsolete. Then comes the substantive work, item by item. The candidate remains the author of their own steps, with their own contact details and their personal appearance; we prepare, check and orchestrate.

• Institution choice and building of the admission file before 31 March
• Equivalence of the Chadian baccalaureate steered through to the decision, language of issue checked
• Legalisation chain confirmed with the competent post before any lodging
• Preparation of the visa file for Yaoundé, administrative fee and means of subsistence included
• A single point of contact, in French, until your arrival in Belgium