A new night train connecting Belgium to Slovakia is planned to get on the rails from the end of next year. The entire journey, with more than 50 stops, would take approximately 19 hours.
The Czech railway company Leo Express has submitted a new notification for a train connection from Belgium – through Germany and Czechia – to Slovakia, according to the notification submitted to the Belgian Regulatory Body for Railway Transport.
Leo Express has proposed 13 December 2026 as the start date, with one train per day going in each direction.
The train would depart from the Belgian coast in Ostend, with stops in Bruges, Ghent, Brussels, Leuven, and Liège. The train would have 24 stops in Germany (including big cities such as Aachen, Cologne, Düsseldorf, Dortmund, Hannover, Magdeburg, Leipzig and Dresden) and 16 in Czechia (including Prague).
Once in Slovakia, stops are planned in Kúty, Malacky, and Devínská Nová Ves before reaching its final stop in the capital, Bratislava.
Second try
This is not the first time Leo Express has announced the connection: it made a similar announcement in 2023. At the time, the railway company aimed to launch in late 2024 or early 2025.
However, unlike the previous announcement, this time it concerns a night train. It is scheduled to depart from Ostend at 19:10 and arrive in Bratislava the following day at 14:18. For the return journey, the train is set to depart from Bratislava at 14:44 and arrive in Ostend at 21:52.
The distance between Ostend and Bratislava, as the crow flies, is over 1,200 kilometres.
Leo Express plans to use modernised passenger coaches and locomotives with a speed of at least 160 km/h and a capacity of approximately 450 seats (and up to around 550 seats from December 2028) on this connection.
Part of the planned Leo Express connection, specifically the number of stops from Dresden to Prague, corresponds to a section of the route travelled by European Sleeper night trains. These night trains run from Brussels, via Antwerp, the Netherlands, and the German capital Berlin, to Prague.
