Direct ICE from Antwerp to Cologne

[Amalie]

DB is planning to operate a new ICE route from Antwerp to Cologne from December 2026, stopping at Brussels Airport, Leuven, Liège, and Aachen in between. I thought it might interest British travellers as Antwerp is a lovely place to do a day trip before traveling further East.

They submitted a document to the Belgian regulators requesting that route.

News article (in Dutch): https://www.nieuwsblad.be/binnenlan...r-2026/72238702.html?journeybuilder=nopaywall

The regulatory document can be found here (as a PDF): https://www.regul.be/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/20250613-Notificatiedocument-DB-VERZENDING.pdf

 

[EuxtonNeutral]

That’d be a great alternative to Brussels!

 

[Mike395]

Interesting! Wonder if they're working with the Belgian railways on this too regarding the overall business case? I suspect one motivation here is making it more attractive to fly into Brussels for destinations in the Rhine-Ruhr region of Germany (which has lots of airports, but they're pretty much at capacity) but an express Liege-Brussels Airport on an Intercity-spec train I suspect is very attractive too domestically.

 

[NCT]

Isn't this purely a DB initiative which will operate as Open Access in Belgium without (active) involvement from SNCB (think I read this in one of the other threads)? Others are welcome to post a source to support or counter this claim ...

 

[rvdborgt]

Isn't this purely a DB initiative which will operate as Open Access in Belgium without (active) involvement from SNCB (think I read this in one of the other threads)?

That is correct. DB do use SNCB's services for some things, but commercially, DB is the sole operator, as you can see on the ICE tickets to Belgium, that only mention 1080 as the carrier.

 

[MarcVD]

On the other end, it's SNCB, not DB, that made the demand of paths to Infrabel.