Pyrus communis cv. Conference is the most widely grown pear cultivar in Belgium. In the summer of 2016, a previously unknown fruit rot on nearly mature Conference pears was observed in seven independent tree orchards in Limburg Province (northeastern Belgium). Infected areas on pear were typically brown, slightly sunken and soft lesions with irregular margins. The causal agent was isolated from the necrotrophic lesions by first disinfecting the diseased areas superficially with 70% ethanol followed by excision of 2 to 3 mm of tissue at the margin of the infected area. Cubic samples were cultured on potato dextrose agar (PDA), supplemented with streptomycin and tetracycline antibiotics at 150 µg/ml each, and incubated at room temperature under alternating light and darkness. Colony color changed from light to dark gray after∼ 7 to 10 days. No conidia were observed even after applying different temperature regimes, culture media (PDA, lima bean, fructic agar, snay, corn meal, and SAB), UV, and/or cold treatment. Cultures were maintained up to 6 months. However, conidia were observed from infected fruits. They were hyaline, thin walled, aseptate, fusiform with a subobtuse apex and a truncate base, and 18.61 to 27.92× 4.02 to 7.51 μm (n= 100), consistent with Botryosphaeria sp.(Slippers et al. 2004). Further identification was performed by amplifying and sequencing the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) region and translation elongation factor 1 alpha (tef1-α) of two different isolates using primers ITS1/ITS4 (White et al. 1990) and EF1-728F/EF1-986R (De Wet et al. 2008), respectively. The obtained ITS sequences (accession nos. KY293589 and KY293590) and tef1-α sequences (MF166618 and MF166619) showed 100% similarity with the sequences of Botryosphaeria dothidea (KT440894. 1 and KU720071. 1). Only two out of seven isolates were sequenced. However, given that within a single week, pear fruits from seven different tree orchards developed the same fruit rot symptoms and all seven isolates showed the same morphological outgrowth, we concluded that all isolates are most likely the same species. To assess pathogenicity, four pear fruits of the same cultivar (Conference) were infected. The surface of the fruits were first disinfected with 70% ethanol followed by wounding. Agar cubes, containing mycelium, obtained from 14-day-old PDA cultures of a single strain, were positioned on the wounds. Four control fruits were also included in the test. Pears were positioned on wet paper towels in plastic boxes and maintained at room temperature. After only 3 days, first symptoms were observed on all pears while control fruits remained healthy. B. dothidea was successfully reisolated 7 days after inoculation. B. dothidea was previously identified on decayed pears in the US (Grand 1985), South Africa (Combrink et al. 1984), New Zealand, Japan, and Taiwan (Ko et al. 1993). In Europe, B. dothidea has been previously reported on pear in Italy (Garibaldi et al. 2012) and on apple in Serbia (Vasić et al. 2013). However, none of these observations were on cv. Conference. To our knowledge, Belgium is the northernmost European country in which the pathogen has been identified and the first identified occurrence on P. communis cv. Conference. Currently, the occurrence of B. dothidea and the disease’s economic damage in Belgium tree orchards remains limited, although the pathogen could represent a future risk for this crop.