Esports Campus Oostkamp: a European first in Belgium!
A brand new, innovative campus dedicated to esports and exergaming: a first in Europe, right here in Belgium. It sounds like a crazy idea but it is actually becoming reality at an increasing pace! The high school of KTA Brugge, school group Impact and the college of Howest have joined forces to make this esports campus come to live in 2026. The BESF went to their preview at the building in Oostkamp where the new campus will be to see what amazing progress has been made in just a year's time.
The esports campus will be a place for youth, students, professionals, organizations and underprivileged groups that want to participate and innovate in an increasingly digital world and economy. The campus will house a professional esports arena, exergaming (the combination of physical exercise and games) and simulation zones, technology and content creation labs and hybrid learning environments for digital and social skills.
Esports education: more than just playing games
We started our preview with a presentation by Kris Vandevoorde, technical advisor at KTA Brugge and also BESF comissioner for institutional relations, who immediately illustrated the importance of a campus like this.
Kris Vandevoorde: "As educators, we see that soft skills and 21st century skills are getting more and more important. Lots of companies are willing to invest in teaching new employees the technical knowledge and hard skills that they need in the work environment. At the same time, the 21st century skills - like team work, communication, stress management and anlytical thinking - are becoming decisive in the recruitement process. These are all skills that we can effectively teach with esports and exergaming."
Next up, we move to what used to be an industrial kitchen, where the pupils of the esports elective course at KTA Brugge are suitably playing Overcooked. Liesbeth Last, teacher of the esports course tells us why her course on esports is more than just gaming.
Liesbeth Last: "Our esports course isn't just for playing games. We focus on 4 important pillars:
- The esports business: pupils learn business skills and gain insights on the role and activities of different stakeholders.
- Esports events: our pupils learn how to organize events with a hands-on approach.
- The esports attitude: esporters are athletes so we teach our pupils about a healthy lifestyle and about balancing gaming with other parts of life, in collaboration with organizations like GameChangers.
- Gameplay: we teach our pupils the skills they need to get results in game. This includes things like stress management, communication but also how to analyze your own games or how to analyze games together and coach each other."
The esports campus will serve as the perfect learning environment for her pupils but also pupils and students from other schools and courses, with the facilities to organize events, create content, analyze games and so on.
How esports and exergaming come together
The last stop of the preview of the esports campus is with Charlotte Van Tuyckom, Innovation manager at Howest, and Nikolaas Van Doninck (Policy and implementation manager at Howest Sports innovation campus). They talk about the role of Howest in the esports campus, while demonstrating some of their exergaming equipment at their sports innovation campus mobile.
Nikolaas Van Doninck: "Our sports innovation campus is a collaboration between Howest and Sport Vlaanderen that focuses on innovating in sports across different domains, including digital coaching, exergames and gamification. When Kris came to us about a year ago with the idea of making a campus that brings esports and exergaming together, I was immediately excited because esports is a much bigger world and by making the combination we can reach more people and get them moving. Now we're already standing here so that shows that things can move very fast."
Charlotte Van Tuyckom: "One of our missions with this campus is to build bridges between sports, exergaming and esports. Through gamification we want to get people excercising but, vice versa, we also want to demonstrate the sports elements in esports. This collaboration between exergaming and esports and between Howest and KTA Brugge is very natural. For example, our students will be organizing a HADO (an augmented reality dodgeball game) exergaming tournament and the pupils of KTA Brugge esports will be helping out, coordinated by our students."
Nikolaas Van Doninck: "Exergaming can also help esports to be recognized as sports. Today, we still see that policy makers are hard to convince that esports is sports. Exergaming for them is easier to accept because of the physical component. If we can show the many similarities between exergaming and esports like performance coaching, healthy lifestyle, consistent training to improve skills and results and so on, then we might be getting somewhere. Perhaps the BESF should look into really incorporating exergaming."
A European project, right here in Belgium
The esports campus is a beautiful example of effective collaboration by stakeholders in the esports space, each bringing their own resources and expertise. By joining forces, they succeeded in securing a grant of €663.000 from the European Fund for Regional Development (EFRO, nl: Europees Fonds voor Regionale Ontwikkeling), kickstarting this unique within the whole of Europe, right here in Belgium. It is a testament that, in Belgium, we can achieve great things if we work together. The total project will total 1.6 million euros with contributions from private partners and investors.
The Esports campus in the press
- VRT NWS - Primeur voor ons land: Eerste esports campus opent volgend jaar in Oostkamp
- HLN - Leerlingen kunnen vanaf volgend jaar gamen op gloednieuwe esports campus in Oostkamp, Monia (16) is een van hen: "Het is zoveel meer dan alleen een spelletje spelen"
- "Het is veel meer dan videogames spelen": hoe Oostkamp het kloppend hart van de e-sports hoopt te worden
- William Boeva over de Esports Campus in de Tafel van Tinne (Play 4)
