The Royal Library of Belgium (Dutch: Koninklijke Bibliotheek van België [ˈkoːnɪŋkləkə ˌbiblijoːˈteːk fɑm ˈbɛlɣijə]; French: Bibliothèque royale de Belgique [biblijɔtɛk ʁwajal də bɛlʒik]; German: Königliche Bibliothek Belgiens [ˈkøːnɪklɪçə biblioˈteːk ˈbɛlɡiəns], abbreviated KBR and sometimes nicknamed Albertine in French or Albertina in Dutch) is the national library of Belgium.

On 12 April 1559, Philip II of Spain consolidated all manuscripts at the Palace of Coudenberg, officially founding the Royal Library of the Low Countries, the direct predecessor of KBR.

Today, KBR continues to serve as a hub for research and cultural heritage, housing millions of manuscripts, books, maps, and digital records.

It contains: The library has 6 special divisions, namely the Coins & Medals, Manuscripts & Rare Books, Maps & Plans, Music, Newspapers & Contemporary Media, and Prints & Drawings Departments.

Its exhaustive collection of Northern European prints is particularly esteemed and includes work by major printmakers, such as Albrecht Dürer, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Anthony van Dyck and Rembrandt.

Among its large collection of drawings are highlights by major Netherlandish artists such as Pieter Bruegel the Elder, Joris Hoefnagel, Hendrick Goltzius, Peter Paul Rubens and Jacob Jordaens.

The Department also includes important work by Belgian artists, most notably among them Félicien Rops, Fernand Khnopff, James Ensor, Léon Spilliaert and Rik Wouters.

[7] Furthermore, KBR's print room has a significant ensemble of Japanese ukiyo-e, including the single copy of Sharaku's Actor Iwai Hanshirō IV in the role of Otoma, and Congolese watercolours from the first half of the 20th century.

The chalcography is a workshop where the art of printmaking is practiced, as well as a division that collects historical printing matrices, such as copper plates and wood blocks.

The Music Department maintains a rich and varied collection composed of hundreds of thousands of manuscript and printed scores, about 100,000 sound recordings, a large collection of correspondence, printed works, concert programmes, posters, photographs and other iconographic documents, not to mention varied objects such as medals, busts, casts, music instruments.

The most representative pieces are part of collections of François-Joseph Fétis, Eugène Ysaÿe, Henri Vieuxtemps, Marc Danval, Yves Becko,[9] Denijs Dille, Flor Peeters and Edgar Tinel.

The Music Division was founded in 1965, building upon the more than 5,000 printed and manuscript documents that made up the private collection of the important 19th-century musicologist François-Joseph Fétis, acquired by the Royal Library in 1872.

The Music Division maintains an active policy of acquisitions through donations and purchase of documents linked with Belgian musical figures such as André-Ernest-Modeste Grétry, Henri Vieuxtemps, César Franck, Eugène Ysaÿe and Guillaume Lekeu, not to mention other European figures such as Albert Roussel, Darius Milhaud, Franz Liszt, Béla Bartók and Edvard Grieg.

The display is dedicated to an extensive collection of manuscripts from the Burgundian era (the so-called Bibliothèque des ducs de Bourgogne or Librije van Bourgondië).

In 2020, La Buveuse d'Absinthe by Félicien Rops, which was looted by the Nazis from the Jewish art collector and lawyer Armand Dorville, was found to be in possession of the Royal Library of Belgium.