The Strawberry moon closed the Belgian Hercules Trophy season. This season opened with a heatwave and ended with an epic storm.

Two days in June. Provinciaal Domein De Nekker, Mechelen, Belgium. The first day, 35 degrees. A heatwave. The second, less hot, but ending in a storm (when everyone was gone already). Made a quick selfie movie on Insta.

The winners are announced and our 2027 strategy is ready to launch.

And in the middle of all that, more than 400 company teams – in private and public trophies – played like it mattered this season. Not because they had to. Because they wanted to. And they loved it. 9.2/10 happiness score in extreme conditions. Thank you crew, thank you customers, thank you suppliers, for your engagement.

We’ve been doing this since 1999. Twenty-seven years. Ten countries. Seventy-seven thousand people. Hundreds of companies. And still, most of Belgium has never heard of us.

That used to bother me. It doesn’t anymore. The best things inside a company are rarely the loudest.

Every year, I listen to the community and we adapt the format. The three main lessons I learned this season:

• Most leaders over-estimate engagement of their employees
• In 2027, employees will no longer get away with disengaged behavior
• And Belgium is becoming a very expensive place

Leaders overestimate their tribe

A hard truth: most leaders overestimate how engaged their people really are.

Not out of arrogance. Out of projection. Leaders are engaged — so we assume the room is too.

It usually isn’t. And that gap — quiet, unmeasured, unspoken — is exactly where teams fall apart.

For years, disengagement has been tolerated. Politely. Invisibly. Because someone always picked up the slack.

Tolerated disengagement is about to end

Here’s what I believe is coming. Very soon.

AI is going to stop leaders tolerating disengagement. When the routine work gets automated, what’s left is the part only an engaged human can do. Connection. Care. Trust. Showing up when it’s 35 degrees and a storm is on the way.

Engagement has been a soft word for a long time. A poster in the hallway. A line in the values deck. Soon, engagement won’t be the nice-to-have. It’ll be the whole game.

That’s not a threat to leaders at all, it’s more a wake-up call to employees. The disengaged will be replaced by the engaged.

We never learned to charge for the hype

And since everyone’s talking about prices, taxes, regulation, and inflation in Belgium these days:

In ten years, festival tickets went up 30 to 45%. Werchter, from 236 to 315 euro. Pukkelpop, from 199 to 287. Tomorrowland, from 225 to 327. (Don’t take my word for it — VRT did the math.)

To make more profit? No, because the costs have gone up a lot since covid.

Ours, in that same decade? Only six percent! That’s less than inflation. 120 EUR standard per head, for a full day, with 35% discount in early bird, that makes only 78 EUR per head if your register early.

An escape room, an archery session, highland games, an activity on the beach will cost you between 40 EUR and 70 EUR, for just one hour…

We offer weeks of pre-engagement, twelve games, awards, a festive day. Even in food an drinks we remain lower than the market. And if you cancel 12 weeks before, you keep your credits for the next year, so no ticket-swap stress.

The legend returns in 2027.

Next week, we open 2027. A brand new season. Early bird rates until the end of August. After 6 years of stable prices, we’ll increase the rates a notch (mainly food and drinks), but if you book before September, it will remain similar to 2026.

We’ll go “legends meet nextgens”. We will soon reveal what that means. Aimed at the engaged people within companies. To back the people who still choose to show up — in the heat, before the storm, when no one is making them show up.

The cycle closed under a powerful supermoon. The legend returns after an epic thunderstorm.

As above, so below.

Yves