Pommelien Thijs Makes History with First Wallonia Show at Ronquières Festival
Belgian pop sensation Pommelien Thijs performed her first-ever show in Wallonia on Saturday at the Ronquières Festival, becoming the first Dutch-language act to ever grace the Walloon festival’s stage. In a historic moment for Belgian pop music, the 25-year-old singer from Antwerp delivered a message of unity across Belgium’s linguistic divide: “We don’t need to speak the same language to dance together.”
According to VRT NWS, Thijs’s one-hour set (18:50-19:50) followed French comedic rap act Fatal Bazooka, drawing both dedicated Flemish fans and curious French-speaking festival-goers to the fourth-largest Walloon festival, which attracts 25,000 visitors per day across three stages.
A Historic First Across the Language Divide
The Ronquières Festival, located in the village of Ronquières in Hainaut province about 20 kilometers south of the Flemish city of Halle, has programmed Flemish artists before—including Balthazar, Sylvie Kreusch, dEUS, and Hooverphonic. But never before had a Dutch-language act performed at the festival. As VRT NWS reported, festival organizer Jean-François Guillin explained the booking: “I was so impressed by her show at Pukkelpop last year that we booked her. High time the Walloon public discovers her live.”
Thijs’s performance came months after The New York Times profiled her as a “popster in de helft van haar land” (pop star in half of her country), a label she sought to shed with this historic appearance. The VRT NWS coverage of the NYT profile noted that while music fans increasingly listen to songs in other languages—Spanish, Korean—language still forms a barrier in Belgian pop music.
Winning Over a New Audience
Many French-speaking festival-goers were unfamiliar with Thijs before the show, but her performance won over many attendees. The singer performed her entire set in Dutch but included French-language banter between songs, apologizing for her accent: “As you can hear, I have a French accent. That’s okay, because I am a Flemish woman.”
As RTBF reported, the French-language public broadcaster described the performance as a successful seduction operation, noting that even though the audience may not understand the lyrics, “the current passes.” Kirsten Sokol, VRT NWS journalist covering culture, drew parallels with Angèle’s approach in Flanders: “She said a few words in French to converse with the audience. It’s charming. It’s also what Angèle does when she gives concerts in Flanders. What’s important is connecting with the audience.”
Festival-goers Pierrick and Solène, who discovered Thijs at the festival, captured the sentiment: “Music shouldn’t be about language, it’s about connection. Pommelien is just a Belgian. We are enormously charmed by her.”
Breaking a Persistent Barrier
The significance of Thijs’s performance extends beyond a single concert. According to Sam Jaspers, founder of Ultratop and the PlayRight-hitlist, “As far as I know, there has not been a single Dutch-language hit by a Flemish artist in Wallonia.” The two music markets within Belgium have historically grown from the language barrier, with Flemish artists singing in English (like Hooverphonic) breaking through more easily in Wallonia than Dutch-language artists.
Thijs’s career achievements are remarkable by any measure: 9 sold-out concerts in 10 days at Ancienne Belgique, 5 sold-out concerts in 8 days at AFAS Dome, 22 consecutive weeks at #1 on the Ultratop 50 in Flanders, and her album “Gedoe” was the best-selling album of 2025 in Belgium. She has 1.1 million monthly listeners on Spotify.
As L’Avenir reported, festival co-organizer Gino Innocente emphasized the festival’s commitment to programming Dutch-speaking artists: “It’s really in our DNA to program artists known on the Dutch-speaking side. The small difference here is that Pommelien sings in Dutch.”
What’s Next
Guillin is confident about Thijs’s future: “She’s certainly an artist who is destined for great success. And we might as well be the first festival to welcome her because I’m convinced that everywhere in the world, in a few years, we’ll have Pommelien everywhere.”
As DH Net noted in its opinion piece, the festival’s decision to program a Dutch-language act represents “a Belgium that listens to each other.” Whether Thijs’s historic performance marks the beginning of greater cross-linguistic exchange in Belgian pop music remains to be seen, but for one evening at least, the language barrier dissolved into shared dance and song.