Bart Van Opstal

Van Opstal was born in Herentals in 1974. From 1992 to 2000 he served as a police officer in Antwerp for the Belgian Gendarmerie.^[1] In 2000, he participated in the first series of the Belgian edition of the reality show Big Brother in which he finished in second place but resigned from his police job as a result of his participation in the program.^[2] In 2004, he co-founded the Red Lierse campaign to help raise funds for the football club Lierse SK and afterwards worked in the club's catering and events department. He also owned a Lierse themed cafe until 2013 before working in the real estate sector.^[3]

Van Opstal first worked as a volunteer for the former Vlaams Blok party in 1992 but did not seriously get involved in politics until joining Vlaams Belang in 2020 where he founded a local branch of the party in Olen. During the 2024 Belgian regional elections, he was elected to the Flemish Parliament for the Antwerp constituency.^[4]