FSMA Announces 2026 Continuing Professional Training Sessions for Accredited Auditors

Key Takeaways

• The FSMA has scheduled its 2026 continuing professional training program for accredited auditors, held in person at its Brussels office in November.
• Compliance teams supporting occupational retirement institutions and collective investment undertakings must register by October 21, 2026, to ensure continued accreditation compliance.

Deep Dive

This press release from the Financial Services and Markets Authority (FSMA) outlines the logistics for the mandatory 2026 continuing professional training program for accredited auditors operating in Belgium. The training is sector-specific, with one session dedicated to institutions for occupational retirement provision and a second session covering undertakings for collective investment, management companies, and regulated real estate companies. This segmentation reflects the FSMA's approach of tailoring technical content to the regulatory frameworks applicable to each auditor specialization.

The key requirement for compliance and audit teams is ensuring that accredited auditors within their organizations register for the relevant session via the FSMA's Event application, using eID or Itsme authentication. Both sessions are held in person at FSMA's Brussels premises, which may require travel arrangements for auditors based outside the capital. Notably, the sessions are free of charge, removing cost as a barrier to attendance, but the in-person format may pose logistical challenges for firms with distributed audit teams.

Timelines are clearly defined: the training sessions take place on November 19 (occupational retirement provision) and November 24, 2026 (collective investment undertakings), with a registration deadline of October 21, 2026. Firms should treat this deadline as a hard compliance date, since late registration is not addressed in the release and may not be accommodated given the administrative lead time needed for in-person events.

Compliance professionals should proactively identify which auditors within their organization require this continuing education credit, confirm their accreditation status, and ensure timely registration well before the October 21 cutoff. It is also advisable to review the full Communication FSMA_2026_17, currently available only in French and Dutch, for any additional eligibility criteria, content outlines, or accreditation-renewal implications that may not be captured in the English-language press release.

From a risk perspective, failure to attend mandated continuing professional training could jeopardize an auditor's accreditation status, creating downstream risks for audit sign-offs, regulatory reporting obligations, and overall governance continuity for affected institutions. This is a low-complexity but time-sensitive administrative compliance matter that should be flagged to relevant HR, learning and development, and audit oversight functions.

Source: Financial Services and Markets Authority