You Can Now Take a Train from Finland to Sweden — Here's Why It Matters
A new passenger train service between Finland and Sweden started running daily on 10 August 2026. The train goes twice a day between the Finnish city of Oulu and the Swedish town of Haparanda, with 28 trips per week VR Group. The ride takes about 100 minutes, travelling along Finland's west coast before crossing the border — a brand-new rail crossing between the two countries BBC News.
This gives Finland its first passenger train link to Sweden, and through Sweden, a connection to the rest of Europe's rail network Railwaypro. But passengers who want to keep going south into Sweden after reaching Haparanda have to switch to a different train, because the new service does not run through BBC News. On the Finnish side, the trains connect to long-distance services heading toward Helsinki VR Group.
The new link makes it possible to travel by train about 5,000 km from southern Portugal all the way to Kolari, Finland's northernmost train station. That is believed to be the longest train route in Europe. It also means you can now travel between Helsinki and Stockholm entirely by train in about 24 hours BBC News.
The reason passengers have to switch trains at Haparanda comes down to the tracks themselves. The distance between the two rails — called the track gauge — is wider in Finland than in Sweden. Finland inherited this wider gauge from the 19th century, when it was part of the Russian Empire. Sweden uses the standard gauge found across most of Europe. Because the rails are different widths, a train from Finland cannot simply keep going on Sweden's tracks. Haparanda is the practical spot where passengers step off one system and onto another BBC News.
VR Group, Finland's state-owned railway company, is run by chief executive Elisa Markula. Markula said she hopes the new service will benefit from a renewed interest in train travel across Europe, and that VR's passenger numbers are going up BBC News. VR announced in March 2022 that it was expanding into Sweden, focusing on climate-friendly urban transport VR Group.
Finland's transport minister said the return of the cross-border train service shows that cooperation between the two countries is growing BBC News.
Sweden's own state railway company, SJ AB, already runs passenger trains across large parts of Sweden as well as to Copenhagen and Oslo. SJ holds a traffic permit for Sweden, Norway and Denmark that runs until December 2033 SJ AB. All of its trips carry an environmental eco-label called Bra Miljöval SJ AB. SJ's network stretches from Narvik in the far north to Copenhagen in the south, and from Stockholm in the east to Oslo in the west SJ AB. SJ also runs night trains across nearly all of Sweden, and night train 94 heading toward Kiruna and Narvik connects with other trains at Boden, a key stop in Sweden's northern rail system SJ.
In Finland, VR runs night trains to Lapland, including the Santa Claus Express from Helsinki to Rovaniemi VR. VR has also added cheaper night train trips to Lapland for travel between 21 September and 22 November 2026 VR.
The broader context here is that this is a step-by-step reconnection, not one dramatic opening. The different track widths mean Haparanda works as a transfer point, not a seamless corridor. A trip from Helsinki to Stockholm by train involves several legs: a VR train from Helsinki to Oulu, the new cross-border train to Haparanda, and then Swedish trains heading south. The 24-hour travel time comes from those transfers. For moving freight and for the bigger dream of a fully connected European rail system, the track difference remains a barrier that no single new route can fix.
What the launch does achieve is bringing back a passenger train across a border that has not had one, and connecting Finland to Europe's rail network in a way that, even if indirect, simply did not exist before. Together, the Finnish and Swedish night train networks now form a chain from Helsinki through Lapland to Narvik, and from Stockholm down to Copenhagen and Oslo. Whether enough people will use this service to keep it running commercially depends on demand in a sparsely populated Arctic region, and on whether the renewed enthusiasm for train travel that Markula describes turns into real passenger growth at this particular frontier.
