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Google plans to invest an additional €5 billion in Belgium over 2026–2027, expanding its data-center campus at Saint-Ghislain and adding 300 full-time jobs. The announcement is a future investment plan—not a report that the spending or construction is complete. Google says the expansion will increase cloud and AI capacity.

What Google plans to build in Belgium

The project is an expansion of Google’s existing data-center campus in Saint-Ghislain, not a newly announced site elsewhere in Belgium. Google’s October 8, 2025 announcement says the €5 billion commitment covers investment in Belgium over 2026–2027, including the campus expansion. The company says the added infrastructure will support cloud and AI capacity. Google’s announcement describes the commitment and the planned 300 additional full-time jobs.

Google says the Saint-Ghislain facility currently supports approximately 600 people in full-time and contractor roles, including technical, engineering, security, catering, and facilities-management work. It says the 300 new jobs at its Wallonia data centers would take direct employment to more than 900. These are company-reported employment figures, not a count of construction jobs or a guarantee that every role has already been filled.

Where the campus is and how it developed

Saint-Ghislain is near Mons in Wallonia, southern Belgium. Google says the area’s energy infrastructure, location, concentration of high-tech businesses, and skilled workforce helped make it a suitable site. Its Belgium data-center location page records the opening of its first data center outside the United States in Belgium in 2010, an expansion completed in 2015, and a facilities-maintenance training program launched with HELHa in 2019. Google’s 2025 announcement dates groundbreaking for its first Belgian data center to 2007; groundbreaking and the 2010 opening are separate milestones.

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How much Google says it has invested

Google says its total investment in Belgium is now more than €11 billion since work began on its first Belgian data center in 2007, a total that includes the newly announced commitment. The location page separately gives an earlier figure of more than €5 billion invested since 2007. That page figure is an earlier investment-to-date amount; it should not be added to the 2025 total or treated as a competing estimate.

What the employment and economic figures mean

The 300 full-time jobs are the announced addition at Google’s data centers in Wallonia. Separate from that direct-job figure, Google cites a Université de Mons and Deloitte report estimating that its historical data-center investments generated €697 million in GDP impact from 2022–2024. The report projects a contribution of more than €1.5 billion annually for 2026–2027 and an average of 14,950 jobs supported per year during those two years.

The GDP and supported-employment numbers are attributed estimates and projections, not measured outcomes of the new campus expansion. Google also says it works with nearly 150 Belgian suppliers, including 80 in Wallonia; supplier counts do not translate directly into jobs created by this project. Google’s announcement attributes the economic figures to the Université de Mons and Deloitte report.

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How the Saint-Ghislain site uses energy and water

Canal water, solar, and reported efficiency

Google says the campus uses chilled water from an industrial canal for cooling and has an on-site solar farm. Its 2024 Belgium impact study reports solar capacity of 4.2 MW at Saint-Ghislain. A 2018 Google account described an earlier 2.8 MW solar plant with 10,665 ground-mounted panels, launched in October 2017. The two values describe different reporting points: the 2018 account describes the plant at that time, while the later study reports site capacity.

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For Google data centers across Belgium—not just the announced expansion—the 2024 impact study reports average power usage effectiveness (PUE) of 1.09 in 2023 and 1.09 in 2022, against an industry average of 1.58 in its comparison. PUE compares total facility energy with the energy used by IT equipment; a lower figure means less facility overhead relative to computing equipment. The study also reports carbon-free energy matching of 82% in 2023 and 80% in 2022, compared with 74% for the regional grid in 2023. These are dated, country-level figures and do not establish the future expansion’s energy performance. Google’s 2024 Belgium impact study provides the reporting periods and scope.

Water consumption and energy flexibility

The same impact study reports water consumption of 924.4 million liters in 2023 and 1,024.3 million liters in 2022 across Google data centers in Belgium. Google says using industrial canal water for cooling at its Belgian data center reduces reliance on potable water. The reported consumption totals are country-wide; they are not site-only figures or projections for the expansion.

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Google’s location page says the Belgian campus has a battery-based system replacing generators at a hyperscale data center. Google says the system can shift energy use away from high-carbon grid hours and respond quickly to changes in load. In its 2025 announcement, Google also says it is working with Centrica Energy and transmission system operator Elia on demand response alongside the facility’s battery storage. These are company descriptions; they do not independently establish the project’s effects on the wider grid. Google also announced more than 110 MW in clean-energy agreements with Eneco, Luminus, and Renner. The announcement does not make that amount a measure of power delivered to the Saint-Ghislain campus alone.

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Community programs and training

Google’s 2024 impact study says the company gave €630,000 to communities in 2022–2023 and supported 38 organizations. It also reports that more than 150 students were supported by a Logiscool Mons STEM program. These are study-reported figures for those periods, not commitments tied solely to the new expansion.

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The 2025 announcement says Google.org will fund nonprofits to offer free practical AI training for Belgian workers seeking to upskill or change careers. This initiative is distinct from the technical facilities-maintenance program Google launched with HELHa in 2019. The announcement also says Google supports Shayp leak detection in 240 nearby non-residential buildings, with an estimated annual water-waste reduction of approximately 500 cubic meters by 2030. That estimate applies to those deployments, not to the data center’s own water use.

What is known—and what remains a plan

The announced investment, location, and intended job addition are clear; the project’s eventual construction progress, operating performance, and realized economic effects are not established by the announcement. Most available project information comes from Google and a study cited by the company. When comparing this campus with other data centers, compare like with like: planned versus operating investment, direct jobs versus broadly supported employment, country-wide versus site-only environmental measures, and measured results versus projections.

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