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Travelling flight-free around Europe is getting easier by the year. At the start of 2026, the Caledonian Sleeper to the Scottish Highlands picked up passengers from Birmingham for the first time, last week Prague and Copenhagen finally became connected by rail and later this year a brand new train will link Paris to Munich.
Now, Eurostar is making moves towards introducing direct journeys from London to Switzerland. If it goes ahead, the journey would mark the first time ever that Brits can reach Switzerland via one direct train.
The cross-Channel rail operator has signed a ‘memorandum of understanding’ with Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) and French SNCF Voyageurs, agreeing to establish a potential direct connection between the two countries.
At the moment, people travelling from London St Pancras have to take the Eurostar to Paris then change to a TGV Lyria train to Zurich – that whole journey takes seven and a half hours. A direct route to Basel would cut that time down to around five hours (not much longer than the train journey from London to Glasgow). It would take five and a half hours to reach Geneva and six hours to get to Zurich.
Eurostar said that the agreement ‘marks an important milestone in the long-term planning for the establishment of a potential new direct connection to the United Kingdom’. It added that London is the top flight destination from Switzerland, so there is strong customer demand for a rail alternative.
Now that a memorandum of understanding has been signed, the next steps will involve figuring out entry formalities, necessary infrastructure changes and intergovernmental agreements. If all of that gets sorted and the route gets the green light, Eurostar says it could be ready at some point in the 2030s.
Switzerland isn’t the only new destination that Eurostar hopes to launch in the next decade. Back in September it confirmed its intentions to offer direct services from London to Cologne and Frankfurt in Germany. And there could be even more destinations on the cards in the future thanks to the arrival of Virgin Trains, which is on track to be the first train operator to challenge Eurostar’s 30-year monopoly on the Channel Tunnel.
Plus: When will every major UK rail operator be nationalised?
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