After an eight-month pause, Eurostar has this week resumed direct connections between London and Amsterdam. However, passengers will face further disruption for a month between March and April.
Direct Eurostar between London and Amsterdam is back
Direct services between Amsterdam Centraal and London St Pancras started again on Monday, February 10. This follows an eight-month hiatus which began in June 2024 as Amsterdam Central Station underwent renovation works, leaving no room for the security and passport control terminal on the Eurostar platform.
In the meantime, passengers travelling from Amsterdam to London were forced to disembark and go through passport control in Brussels. Passengers travelling from London to Amsterdam were able to go through passport control at St Pancras, and so that route was unaffected by the renovation works.
Plans to add fourth daily London-Amsterdam connection
Direct Amsterdam-London trains now run three times a day, including a new early morning train that departs from Amsterdam at 6.40am and arrives in London at 9.57am. Eurostar hopes to add a fourth daily service later this year. On top of this, there are an additional six daily connections to London via Brussels. The trains also stop in Rotterdam and Lille.
The new UK terminal in the Amstelpassage in Amsterdam station has also enabled Eurostar to increase capacity on its London-Amsterdam trains: 400 passengers can now travel on each train, up from the 275 that could previously board via the old terminal. This capacity is expected to increase to 650 by September 2025.
Further disruption to Eurostar connection in April 2025
Unfortunately, however, that’s not the end of the disruption. ProRail has announced that it needs to undertake further renovations at Amsterdam Centraal this spring, which means the newly-opened terminal will shut again from the end of March to the end of April, once again forcing passengers heading to London to change trains in Brussels. The direct connection will resume in May 2025.
The good news is that Eurostar seems to have resolved its spat with the Dutch rail operator, NS. Earlier this year Eurostar threatened to cancel the London-Amsterdam service due to issues with capacity and reliability, but NS reports that most of these issues have been resolved.
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