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I have found out that I had interpreted the problem wrongly. It is not a problem of balancing, it is a problem of the layout macros. I use a different page layout for the titlepage and switch to the main layout later. This switch is in the front matter part, which results in the new layout being respected for one page only. Somehow for subsequent pages, the layout is wrong. Here's a MWE: \definelayout[Titlelayout][width=10cm,height=10cm,header=0cm,footer=0cm] \definelayout[Mainlayout][width=10cm,height=25cm,header=0cm,footer=0cm] \showframe \definestartstop[Titlepage][ before={\setuplayout[Titlelayout]}, after={ \page[yes] \setuplayout[Mainlayout] }] \starttext \startfrontmatter \startTitlepage Title \stopTitlepage \stopfrontmatter \dorecurse{5}{\input{knuth}} \placetable[270,page]{none} {\setupTABLE[option=stretch, textwidth=25cm] \bTABLE \bTR \bTD 1 \eTD \bTD 2 \eTD \eTR \eTABLE} \dorecurse{5}{\input{knuth}} \stoptext The frames are drawn correctly on all pages. But only page 2 is filled with text completely. On subsequent pages, the real layout seems to be too short. If I remove \startfrontmatter and \stopfrontmatter, the problem disappears. It also works if I input \setuplayout[Mainlayout] in the preamble, which is cleaner anyway because it is independent of the titlepage macros. Kind regards, Joshua Krämer