Starting in July 2027, a direct high-speed rail link will be established between Brussels and Basel, Switzerland. “This is a pilot project designed to assess the demand for travel between Brussels and Basel,” says the Belgian public railway company NMBS/SNCB. For this project, NMBS/SNCB, SNCF Voyageurs, and the Swiss operator SBB are joining forces.
There is currently no direct train connection between Belgium and Switzerland. Still, for this project, the existing TGV Inoui high-speed line between Brussels and Strasbourg, which is jointly operated by the French railway company SNCF and NMBS/SNCB, would be extended.
On Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, service on that line will be extended to Basel, with one train in each direction per day.
Three days a week
The TGV Inoui departs from Brussels around 7 a.m. and arrives in Basel around 12:30 p.m. In the opposite direction, the train departs Basel around 2 p.m. and arrives in Brussels around 7 p.m.
The intermediate stops are the same as on the current Brussels-Strasbourg route: Lille-Europe, Roissy Aéroport CDG TGV, Champagne-Ardenne TGV, Meuse TGV, Lorraine TGV, and Strasbourg.
Thanks to this expansion, Swiss travelers can travel to London via a transfer in Lille or continue their journey to the Netherlands from Brussels – options that do not exist in the current schedule.
More routes to Switzerland are coming soon
Several new routes from Belgium to Switzerland are in the works. For example, the night train operator European Sleeper plans to begin running trains from Brussels to Switzerland starting in September, and on to Milan. These night trains will not stop in Basel, but in places like Lugano.
And Eurostar has announced a high-speed rail connection between Brussels and Geneva, but that won’t be available for several years.
€50 million investment in a workshop in Forest
Over the next three years, NMBS/SNCB will invest nearly 50 million euros in its workshop in Forest, which specializes in high-speed trains, particularly those for TGV Inoui and Eurostar. The site, located near the Brussels-South station, employs approximately 320 people.
The investment will, among other things, adapt the workshop for the future double-decker trains ordered by both the SNCF (for TGV Inoui) and Eurostar. In addition, the site will be expanded to include two extra tracks with 400-meter-long maintenance pits.
SNCF expects the new trains to arrive starting in 2029; Eurostar starting in 2031. Any future competitors could also go to the workshop.
As a matter of fact, the high-speed rail connections between Brussels and France have been in operation for exactly 30 years.
Today, there are 9 daily trips in each direction, and 28 destinations in France are directly accessible from Brussels. The trains carry approximately 1.8 million passengers per year.
