Arts² Admissions: Entrance Exams, Tuition and Deadlines by Domain

• Arts² admits every applicant through a domain-specific artistic entrance exam rather than a published acceptance rate or GPA cutoff — visual arts, music and theatre each set their own test dates and content.
• The 2026-27 annual registration fee is EUR 1,194 for Belgian and EU students; non-EU bachelor's and master's students pay that fee plus a mandatory EUR 4,175 contribution, EUR 5,369/year in total, unless exempt.
• The next entrance-exam window is the standard visual-arts session, 1-3 September 2026, with an extra Interior Architecture session 24-28 August 2026 and Theatre's first round starting 31 August 2026.
• Teaching and coursework run in French; English appears mainly on Erasmus exchange and Wallonie-Bruxelles International (WBI) grant pages.
• Around 900 students study across four domains — visual arts, dance, music and theatre — on one campus in Mons.

Arts² is a small École Supérieure des Arts, not a comprehensive university, and it decides admission the way a conservatoire or fine-arts school does: through a practical test in the applicant's chosen domain, sat on dates each domain sets for itself. There is no single application deadline or centralised score to clear — a violinist auditions on the music calendar, a painter sits the visual-arts test, an actor works through theatre's two-round process, and each track can fall on a different week of the year.

That structure suits an applicant who already knows their discipline and is ready to build a portfolio, audition piece or written test around it, rather than someone comparing broad subject lists across universities. It also suits a budget-conscious EU applicant: EUR 1,194 a year is a registration fee, not a market tuition rate, and it stays flat regardless of the domain or option chosen.

It fits less well for someone who wants an English-medium campus or a large international student body. This is a small, French-speaking school — the entrance process, correspondence and daily coursework all run in French, with English confined to Erasmus and WBI paperwork. Anyone weighing a non-EU move should also budget for the full EUR 5,369, plus the entrance exam itself, well ahead of enrolment.

Tuition by level, 2026-27

Living costs in Mons

Last verified 20 July 2026 against Arts²'s own 2026-27 registration terms and Wallonie-Bruxelles Campus's cost-of-living figures.

The EUR 1,194 EU/Belgian registration fee is a fraction of the EUR 8,000-12,000 that Wallonie-Bruxelles Campus estimates as the full cost of Belgian higher education before public subsidy — the subsidy is what keeps the sticker price this low for EU students. Add the living-cost categories above together and a student in French-speaking Belgium is looking at roughly EUR 1,000-1,300 a month, before tuition.

Arts² sends its first reminder about the EUR 50 minimum deposit on 15 September 2026, with a last reminder on 15 January 2027 covering the remaining balance and, for non-EU students, the EUR 4,175 mandatory contribution. Payment runs by bank transfer with the reference "DI 2026-2027 + NOM et Prénom + matricule/option".

Non-EU applicants whose country sits on the UN Least Developed Countries list, who graduated from secondary education organised or subsidised by the Fédération Wallonie-Bruxelles, or who hold a Wallonie-Bruxelles International scholarship are exempt from the EUR 4,175 additional contribution — worth checking before budgeting for the full EUR 5,369.

That EUR 5,369 non-EU total is not a figure Arts² set on its own: Wallonie-Bruxelles Campus confirms the same total applies to non-EU students at Belgian universities, university colleges and schools of arts alike from the 2025-26 academic year onward. A prospective student comparing Arts² against another French-speaking Belgian institution should expect the same non-EU pricing structure at both, with the difference showing up in living costs and domain fit rather than in the tuition line.

The same registration-fee schedule and payment dates apply whether the enrolment is at bachelor's or master's level — Arts² does not run a separate, higher fee track for its master's programmes the way some universities price postgraduate study above undergraduate.

Arts² sits in Mons and takes part in the Pôle hainuyer, a network linking it with other universities and hautes écoles in the province. Its Social Council manages the Maison internationale et sociale, a residence with 4 equipped studios for students who need housing support.

Beyond that dedicated housing, students budget against French-speaking Belgium's general averages: a university residence room runs about EUR 465 a month including utilities, against roughly EUR 590 a month for private accommodation on the open market. Arts² also keeps domain-specific libraries for Music, Visual Arts and Theatre, so course materials and research space sit inside each discipline rather than in one shared building.

Foreign students enrolled at a Wallonia-Brussels Federation institution and holding a valid residence permit can work up to 20 hours a week during term time, with no hour limit over the Christmas, spring and summer holidays. Incoming Erasmus exchange students must submit their mobility form and home-institution nomination by 15 April each year.

The school's own housing stock is small next to its wider student body, so the Maison internationale et sociale suits early applicants more than latecomers — contacting the Social Council as soon as an offer is confirmed is worth doing before defaulting to the private market. On daily life, the domain libraries mean a music student, a painter and an actor each work out of collections built around their own discipline rather than a single shared general library.

Being part of the Pôle hainuyer also means Arts² students can draw on services shared across the partner universities and hautes écoles in the network, rather than only on what a single school of under a thousand students could run alone.

Arts² trains performing and creating artists across its four domains, and it builds outside connections into that training through Erasmus exchange and collaborations on third-cycle research with partner universities rather than through an in-house doctoral programme of its own. The dance domain carries that networked approach furthest: it runs as a standing partnership with Charleroi danse, HEPH-Condorcet, INSAS and ENSAV La Cambre, so a dance graduate's professional contacts extend beyond Arts² itself from the start of the degree rather than only after graduation.

The clearest concrete rules for graduates concern working rights rather than placement statistics. Foreign students may work up to 20 hours a week during term time while studying, with no cap over the holidays. After finishing a degree, non-EU graduates from third countries can request a 12-month extension to their residence status specifically to look for work or set up a company — a full year to convert artistic training into a first job or a practice of their own, without leaving Belgium to do it.

For a graduate weighing where that year is best spent, the Pôle hainuyer network Arts² belongs to alongside other Mons-area universities and hautes écoles is a practical starting point for local connections, since the same institutions cooperate on training during the degree itself.

Non-EU nationals coming to study full-time for more than 90 days need authorisation to stay, normally applied for as a Visa D. Applicants generally submit in person, give fingerprints and answer a questionnaire on their academic background and study plans; exact requirements shift with both the length of stay and the applicant's nationality.

That visa file only opens once an Arts² admission letter is in hand, so the domain-specific entrance-exam calendar sets the earliest possible start date for the whole process — a music applicant clearing the early spring admissions round can begin the Visa D file months before a visual-arts applicant sitting the September standard session.

EU and EEA nationals do not go through this long-stay visa route at all — they study under free-movement rules and only need to complete standard municipal residence formalities once they arrive.

Work rights follow the same enrolment test either way: any foreign student registered at a Wallonia-Brussels Federation institution and holding a valid residence permit can work up to 20 hours a week during the school year, with no hour limit during the Christmas, spring and summer holidays. Once studies finish, third-country graduates can apply for a 12-month extension to their stay to look for work or start a company, rather than having to leave immediately after the final exam.