The Sinksenfoor takes its name from Sinksen, the Flemish word for Pentecost, and it opens on Pentecost weekend. In 2026 it ran from Saturday 23 May to Sunday 28 June on Spoor Oost, a former railway site in Borgerhout, with 147 stalls, 39 of them selling food and drink, along a route of almost two kilometres. It is the largest fair in Flanders, and in a normal year it draws between 800,000 and 900,000 visitors.

The 2023 version of this page put the fair in Park Spoor Noord and traced it to the 16th century. It is not held in Park Spoor Noord, and no source we could find supports the date. What the record does show is a fair stubborn enough to keep going through the war, and a move, in 2015, that took three years of court cases and threats.

From the Zuid to Spoor Oost

For years the fair stood on the Gedempte Zuiderdokken, the filled-in docks of the Zuid, where a large car park became the fairground for weeks every year from Pentecost. Under the regional zoning plan, that car park should have been a park. In 2012 a group of six residents, who became known as the six of ‘t Zuid, started legal proceedings with their lawyer, Griet Cnudde. In 2013 a court ruled that the fair had to leave; it was allowed two more years on the docks while the city looked for a new site. In March 2014 the showmen refused a temporary move, and only in early 2015, after the city agreed to adjust the opening hours, add a third access road and cut the pitch fees, did they agree to go to Spoor Oost.

The fight was ugly. Cnudde said the group received threats from all sides, including death threats by post and social media. One of the residents, Ludovic Vekemans, found a letter with bullets in his letterbox, and later a letter threatening his 14-year-old daughter. “I had to send my daughter to school under police escort,” he told VRT in 2025. The showmen say they had nothing to do with the threats. “We were so far into the process that we did not want to give in to that blackmail,” Cnudde said.

Ten years on, both sides got what they wanted. The docks are now the Zuidpark, which recently won the Flemish Prijs Publieke Ruimte for public space; the course of the Antwerp 10 Miles ran through it for the first time in 2026. And the showmen have stopped looking back. “I would not want to go back,” said Jean-François Vlasselaerts, their spokesman, in 2025. Francis Bodet, another showman, called the new site fantastic because the fair is far more visible there than it was on the Zuid.

The move was the right decision, and the Zuidpark is the proof: the city gained a prize-winning park, and the fair gained a site where it is seen. It was not free for Borgerhout. Residents near Spoor Oost report cars parked in front of their garages during the fair, and Ali El Moussaoui, a social worker who has lived in the district for 47 years, told VRT the neighbourhood would never fully get used to it, because it is short of green space. Oostnatie, which wants to turn part of Spoor Oost into greenery, says the fair is simply too big for its plans.

The fair itself

Some of the families on the site have been coming for generations. François Adler’s Big Ben Palace has stood at the Sinksenfoor since 1966. Joey Roels runs the Cake-Walk, an antique funhouse his grandfather bought in the 1960s, and still builds it by hand. “We do everything by hand, like before, without cranes,” he said as the 2026 build began; its old organ still plays. At the other end of the scale, the 2025 edition had a ride more than 80 metres high, and the new rides for 2026 were Thrill Ride Kong, a Bidule-type ride called Rolling Rock, and a rope ladder that visitors try to climb without tipping over.

The numbers depend on the sky. The 2024 fair, which ran six weeks, drew about 875,000 visitors, 25,000 fewer than the year before, because of rain; the 2025 edition drew about 800,000 in five weeks “despite rain and heatwaves”, in the words of the alderman for fairs, Johan Klaps. In 2026 a hot opening weekend was followed by regular showers, and by mid-June attendance was running about a third below 2025. “That is down to our biggest competitor: the weather,” Vlasselaerts said.

One afternoon a year is kept for people who find the crowds too much. On 2 June 2026 about 1,800 people with disabilities had the fair from 13:00, three hours before the usual weekday opening, with free rides, free smoutebollen and a drink. The initiative is more than 20 years old and began with 200 to 300 guests; the organisers now keep numbers below 2,000 on purpose. “It has to stay safe and pleasant for everyone,” Vlasselaerts said.

Hours, entrances and the next edition

In 2026 the fair opened at 16:00 on weekdays and at 14:00 on Wednesdays and at weekends, and closed at midnight, except on Fridays (01:00) and Saturdays (02:00). The main entrance is on the north side, at Schijnpoortweg and Noordersingel, by the Schijnpoort stop that also serves the Lotto Arena, home of the Antwerp Giants; there are further entrances on Noordersingel and Buurtspoorweglei. The site is inside the low-emission zone, parking at Noordersingel cost €7, and noise is capped at 75 decibels from 22:00 and 70 from 23:30. The city publishes the hours, entrances and dates on the fair’s official site.

The ground under the fair is about to change. In June 2026 the city announced it would replace the worn concrete slabs and cobbles of Spoor Oost with asphalt, remove the old rail tracks still on the site, and lay a new base with extra drainage, because the site floods in heavy rain. Work is meant to start this winter and finish before the next edition. “After ten years, Spoor Oost has grown into an indispensable home base for the Sinksenfoor,” Klaps said.

The Sinksenfoor is one stop on a circuit. When the 2020 edition was cancelled, because fairs were allowed again only from 1 August, the showmen explained that by then they would be in Brussels, at the Zuidfoor. Even in the war, they pointed out, the Antwerp fair had gone ahead. Pentecost falls on 16 May in 2027.