The Masked Singer is a Belgian reality singing competition television series based on the Masked Singer franchise. It premiered on VTM on 18 September 2020. The first two series were hosted by Niels Destadsbader. The winner of the first series was Sandra Kim. The winner of the second series was Camille Dhont. The third and fourth series are hosted by Jens Dendoncker. Aaron Blommaert and Francisco Schuster won the following seasons. After four seasons in which a professional singer won, comedian Jade Mintens won the fifth season.

The second series premiered 14 January 2022 and ended on 18 March 2022. The third season started 3 January 2023. A live concert was announced. A fourth season started in the fall of 2024.

The program was the best-watched program in Flanders in 2020, 2022 and 2023. The fifth season was launched in fall 2025 and became the second most watched program in 2025.

Format The Belgian series followed the format of the South Korean version it was based on.

The series was a singing competition. Contestants had to sing and perform songs, and compete in duels against each other. The studio audience could vote for the best performance, giving this singer a pass for the next round. Singers who lost the duels had to face the jury and the studio audience again, until one singer remained. That singer had to leave the competition.

The singers were masked. The singers didn't wear masks only but specially made costumes that hide their faces and bodies completely. The real identity of the singer was masked and the singer received a new identity of the costume he was wearing. The singers looked like the character, behaved like the character and were named as the character. The voice of the singer was changed into the characters voice by using a voice changer. Only during the singing performance, the true voice of the singer could be heard.

The series was a guessing game. The judges and the home audience had to guess the true identity of the masked singers. Throughout the series, they got clues of the identity by the hints the singer gave during the pretaped mini-movies or after his performance. Sometimes there were clues hidden in the costumes.

Production Costs Making The Masked Singer was expensive. What VTM paid to purchase the format remained secret. A channel pays the rights holder about 5 percent of their local production budget to purchase the format. One expert said that an episode of a studio show in Flanders costs between 250,000 and 400,000 euros. At the average of 325,000 euros per episode, you arrive at a production budget 3,900,000 euros for 12 episodes. In addition came the high costs for the costumes and the participation fee for the candidates. VTM was able to pay for the production thanks in part to many partnerships.

Recording In January 2020, VTM announced that they would be producing a local series of the franchise. Normally, the series would have been recorded in March 2020, but recording was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic. Recording started in June but with a limited audience. The judges were in the same group they could meet during the social restrictions because of COVID-19. After the final of the first season at 6 November 2020, VTM confirmed a second season. This season was recorded during the summer of 2022.

Design Lightning expert Michiel Milbou, executive producer Olivier Deprez, director Maryse Van den Wyngaert and set designer Koen Verbrugghe designed the set. The only certainty were two giant masks, left and right, as entrances to the stage. The production was commended by The Economic Times for the set design and the clever use of lighting to give the impression there was a bigger audience. It was named one of the best and most beautiful productions of the international The Masked Singer editions. There was meant to be an audience of 300 people but because of COVID-19 measures, there was only an audience of 80 people possible. It took 1 hour to get the audience according to the measures and social restrictions safely into the studio. A home audience of 100 families was added.

Selection Potential contestants for the first season were invited for a meeting. The format was explained and videos shown of international editions. Non-professional singers had to sing for 10 minutes for the singing coach of the series. Some contestants weren't withhold because of the limited capacity of their voice. After being selected the contestants received singing and dancing training.

In subsequent seasons, casting director Dimitri Smeulders considered the participants' empathy to be an important requirement. In addition, putting together the cast was a customised process; there was no such thing as the ideal candidate, but rather the ideal group composition. The well-known participants had to come from different fields and appeal to multiple generations. Once selected, candidates received singing lessons from vocal coach Ibernice MacBean. Here, they not only learned to sing in costume, but also to dare to sing in front of an audience of millions—a particular challenge for non-professional singers. In the Belgian edition, unlike other foreign editions, all singing was live. Professional singers faced other challenges; they often adjusted their voice to remain unrecognizable for as long as possible. Maksim Sotjanac sang some songs three tones lower in season 3, and season 4 winner Francisco Schuster darkened his voice. To ensure that a voice was not too recognizable, Fremantle played recordings to a select test audience of employees. Based on their judgment, some participants were eliminated. Belle Perez, for example, was not selected for the regular series, but was allowed to participate once in a The Masked Singer concert in 2024.

Costumes After seeing the South-Korean format, the production knew that the costumes had to be high level to make the concept work in Flanders. Emmy Award-winning costume designer Marina Toybina created the costumes for the first three seasons. The process of creating a costume took three months. It started with the Belgian production pitching what characters they want. Toybina made concepts based on those wishes. The concepts were then used by the Belgian team to design the costume. The costumes are made by Alexandra Brandner in Germany and the masks by Marianne Meinl in Austria. At that time it is known who will wear the costumes, so the costumes can be fitted to the height and seize of the contestant.

Every candidate needed half or a full hour to get into the costume. Bathroom breaks were carefully planned. After only 10 minutes it became 35 degrees behind the masks. The costume of Queen was the heaviest with 12 kg. The costume of Dragonfly was the widest with 2,5 meters. The costumes of Diver and Monkey were modified during the season according to the songs they performed. The costume of Wolf had to be adjusted because the candidate got backproblems due to the weight of the tail. The helmet of Diver had so much condensation after three minutes, the contestant had to sing and perform blinded. Contestant Kathleen Aerts had to be overcome her claustrophobia to be able to wear the mask. During season two the temperature of the costume of Cyclops was measured 56 degrees. To remove the smell from the costumes, the dressmakers used vodka.

Contestants of the second season were again subjected to extreme conditions. The temperature inside the costume of Cyclops was measured 56 degrees Celsius one time and the head only of Red Deer weighed 10 kg. Contestants had a special designed armor to divide the heaviness of their costumes. The costume of Radish was made to have two arms outside but because of a weak shoulder of the contestant, the character had only one moving arm. The input from the Belgian production became bigger for the third season. Again, the costumes required a lot of work. More than 2.000 rhinestones were put into the costume of Wizard, taking 450 hours. Raven's costume needed 10.000 real feathers and took more than 500 hours to be complete. The suit of Cosmos required its own Wifi for the lightning hoops. The limited visibility due to the costumes became apparent when Foxy Lady almost fell off a stage.

For the fourth season, viewers could design one costume. Winner was 11-year-old Fiona with her costume Mister Withlove, based on the typical Belgian green chicory, called "witloof" in Dutch. As to the price of the costumes, the creators would only say that it is "thousands of euros" per costume. Investigative journalists calculated that a suit's budget went from 10,000 to 15,000 euros. But not every suit fell exactly into this price range. It was also disclosed that the characters and costumes were the first step, and a match was sought with a known contestant only afterward since the lead time for a costume was about a year. The executive producers of Fremantle and VTM had a list of ideas for characters each season. From there, a shortlist was made of about 14 characters. The selection was made on feasibility but also variety of both the types of characters but also their color. A selection was also made of cute characters for young viewers, spectacular characters for discerning viewers and all-round characters. The final measurement of the costumes was done a six to eight weeks before the costume was delivered. Participants had to be careful not to lose or gain too much weight. The fourth season featured a one-time masked singer for the first time. It was the first time in the Belgian series that this contestant was not given a new costume, but borrowed a costume from the first season of the German series, the costume of Eichhörnchen (Squirrel).

Due to the high quality of Belgian costumes, the Hippo costume of the third season was loaned for the sixth season of the French series, and even became the costume of the eventual winner. Both Hippo and Wolf of the first season appeared as Hippopo-Dame and Renardo, respectively, in the fifth season of the Canadian Chanteurs masqués. The Leeuw costume from the third season was also exchanged for the sixth Dutch season. Despite the fact that Flemish costumes are in demand abroad, VTM formally confirmed that all costumes in the Flemish regular season will be unique.

Security

The series had a codename during the production of the first season, "Meloenenjacht". The series is prerecorded so there are fewer people aware that the series is being recorded. The first two series were recorded during summer, at a time where the contestants had more free time at their schedules and it wouldn't be obvious to their relatives they would be away during the recording days.

The series had a codename during the production of the first season, "Meloenenjacht". Only 8 people knew the identity of the participants in advance: the executives of VTM, the singing and dancing coaches and directors of the series. The contestants also knew the identity of the other contestants. No other people were informed. Contestants had to get permission of the production team if they needed to inform their partner, family or children. VTM also asked the press not to leak any information about the identity of the participants if something was discovered.

During their arrival and exit at the recording studios the singers wear concealing black clothes, including the hoodie with the message "Don't talk to me" and masks. The contestants were brought with anonymous cars to the recording studios and had to put their personal belongings in a black bag. During rehearsals contestants had to use sign language or a chalk board to communicate with the crew because it was forbidden to use their real talking voice. For the second season the departure of the singers was strictly organised since people already knew the show and were more attentive.