Amsterdam to Barcelona night train delayed by a year

The European Sleeper night train from Amsterdam to Barcelona will likely start running in 2026, and not 2025 as initially planned. The company is having trouble negotiating with the French railway manager SNCF Réseau and is also waiting for more train carriages.

Despite the issues with SNCF Réseau, European Sleeper co-founder Chris Engelsman is optimistic about the new connection to Barcelona. “Things are improving step by step. We also hear from other parties that it is simply difficult to do business with SNCF Réseau,” he told the Treinreiziger.

According to Engelsman, the French attitude is “party understandable but also partly incompetence.” SNCF Reseau is “very conservative” in its planning for nighttime railworks, he said. “They plan a lot of work in advance that does not always happen. They do not even have that many contractors. They are playing it very safe, and that does not make a night train possible.”

But things are improving, he added. Last year, the European Commission made the new European Sleeper connection one of ten pilot projects for passenger transport in Europe. These projects receive political and administrative support to remove barriers in their way. And that support is helping, Engelsman said. “It is now only a matter of time.”

European Sleeper is also waiting for new carriages for the new train. “We need 30 to 35 good carriages. We are working on that now, but they will probably also have to be renovated.”

Engelsman called 2026 a feasible launch time for the nightrain from Amsterdam to Barcelona, traveling via Brussels and Lille. “But it could also be end of 2025. We will start as soon as we can. The sooner the better.”

European Sleeper also recently announced a seasonal night train to Venice in February and March next year. The train will start in Brussels and stop in Rotterdam and Utrecht in the Netherlands. Ticket sales for this wintersports train will start on September 24.