Antwerp, Leuven, and Brussels Airport are now connected to Germany – specifically Cologne – by high-speed train. This is the first-ever high-speed train service between Antwerp and Germany.
Deutsche Bahn is operating its newest ICE neo trains on this route, which can accommodate over 400 passengers and reach speeds of up to 300 km/h.
Thanks to the partnership between Deutsche Bahn and Brussels Airlines, travelers from western Germany can now combine their train trip and flight into a single booking.
This is exactly the kind of intermodal travel that airports such as Frankfurt, Amsterdam Schiphol, and Paris Charles de Gaulle have been offering for some time, and an area in which Brussels Airport had been lagging.
Tickets starting at 29,99€
Deutsche Bahn trains run twice a day in both directions, with stops in Aachen, Liège, Leuven, Brussels Airport, and Antwerp. Passengers from Antwerp boarding the ICE will arrive in Cologne in about 2 hours and 20 minutes.
From Brussels Airport, the trip takes less than two hours, and from Leuven, about an hour and a half. The trains arrive in Cologne aat round 1:30 p.m. and 9.30 p.m. Tickets between Antwerp and Cologne are available starting at 2. 29,99
For both Leuven and Antwerp, this marks the first permanent direct high-speed rail connection to Germany. The mayors of both cities are delighted.
“This strengthens our international reputation as an attractive city to live in, visit, and host conferences,” says Mohamed Ridouani, the socialist mayor of the central city in Flemish Brabant, where German make up for the largest group of overnight visitors after Belgians and Dutch.
Furthermore, the connection to the broader German ICE network ensures that travelers from major cities such as Frankfurt, Hamburg, or Berlin can also reach Leuven easily with just one transfer in Cologne.
“The new connection will not only become the go-to way for visitors to travel from the Rhineland to Antwerp, or vice versa,” says Antwerp Mayor Els van Doesburg (N-VA).
“It will also strengthen our competitive edge: investors and businesses will now find it easier to make their way to our city.” Starting in mid-December, the Eurostar from London will also stop at Antwerp Central Station.
Reserved seat and guaranteed flight connection
Brussels Airport, meanwhile, is once again connected to the high-speed rail network for the first time since 2015 – when a Thalys train still ran between Brussels and Paris.
“An important step in the further development of Brussels Airport as an intermodal hub,” says airport CEO Arnaud Feist, who also pointed out that Brussels Airport has a rich history in rail transportation.
In 1958, it was a pioneer when, following the World’s Fair in Brussels, it became the first airport in the world to offer an integrated train. However, that title is also often attributed to London Gatwick.
In any case, Brussels Airlines has a codeshare agreement with Deutsche Bahn. This means that airline passengers can combine a train ride and a flight with a single ticket.
They are then assigned a reserved seat in a separate train car, as well as a guaranteed connection in the event of delays. According to the airline, more than 1,000 such tickets have been sold since the partnership was announced in February.
For travelers from Germany’s Rhine-Ruhr region, it also offers an alternative to short flights: the train for short and medium distances, and the plane for longer ones.
This is in line with the European trend of replacing short flights with train travel. Currently, the most popular destinations for German train travelers passing through Brussels Airport are New York, Accra (Ghana), and Alicante (Spain).
“Trains and planes aren’t competitors, but two halves of the same puzzle,” says Belgian Minister of Mobility Jean-Luc Crucke (Les Engagés). “For trips up to 1,000 km, such as to Amsterdam, Paris, and Cologne, the train should be the preferred option.”
Advantages include that trains often arrive in the city center and emit about 7 times less CO2 than airplanes on the trip between Antwerp and Cologne.
Brussels Airlines also hopes that this marks the beginning of a more extensive high-speed rail network at Brussels Airport, with more seamless options for combining train and air travel in the future.
One drawback, however, is that travelers still must carry their own luggage between the train station and the airport. But there isn’t an immediate solution to that.
“The year of the German expansion in Belgium”
Deutsche Bahn also expanded its operations in Belgium this year with a second route: Cologne-Brussels-Ostend (with stops in Leuven, Ghent, and Bruges), which demonstrates that DB itself has designated 2026 as the “year of German expansion in Belgium.”
The connection to Antwerp was “the logical next step for our network,” according to HR Director Martin Jende. After all, demand has risen sharply: between 2019 and 2025, the number of passengers on cross-border ICE trains between Germany and Belgium increased by about 18%.
The Belgian railway company NMBS/SNCB is also doing its part to support the connection. For example, half of the trains will be operated by NMBS/SNCB train conductors. And the company is responsible, among other things, for part of the train cleaning, passenger services, and ticket sales through NMBS/SNCB International.
The passenger advocacy group TreinTramBus welcomes the new high-speed rail connection between Belgium and Germany but insists that additional international connections must not come at the expense of domestic rail service.
It advocates opening up the trains for travel between Belgian stations as well – just as travelers in the Netherlands take the Eurocity Direct for domestic trips, and in Germany do the same with the ICE, just as in Switzerland one can take a German ICE, a French TGV, or an Italian high-speed train runs on the domestic rail network. Anyone may use them for domestic travel within Switzerland.
