Virgin Trains Will Soon Compete With Eurostar — Here's What's Happening
Virgin Trains has been given the go-ahead to run trains from London to Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam starting in 2030, ending Eurostar's thirty-year run as the only passenger train company using the Channel Tunnel (The Guardian, 17 August 2026). The UK's rail regulator — the Office of Rail and Road, known as the ORR — approved up to 20 round-trip services per day through the tunnel, with permission lasting from October 2030 to the end of 2040.
Virgin Trains plans to leave from London St Pancras and go to the same stations Eurostar uses in Paris, Brussels, and Amsterdam. A senior ORR official, Martin Jones, called the decision "an important next step" in bringing competition to international rail travel (The Guardian, 17 August 2026). Eurostar has had the cross-Channel passenger market entirely to itself since the tunnel opened in 1994.
Think of the Channel Tunnel rail route like a highway with only one rest stop. For a new train company to compete with Eurostar, it needed a place in the London area to park, clean, and repair its trains. That place is called Temple Mills depot, in east London, and it's the only one connected to the high-speed line that runs between London and the tunnel. In March 2025, the ORR confirmed that space at Temple Mills could be shared with Virgin Trains (ORR, March 2025).
By October 2025, the ORR formally gave Virgin Trains access to share that depot (The Guardian, 30 October 2025). The plan comes in two phases, with the second adding more trips to Paris and new services to Amsterdam via Brussels, reaching a total of 20 daily round trips (ORR decision letter, 30 October 2025).
Eurostar hasn't simply accepted this. The company fought to keep its depot space and has promised to start direct trains from the UK to Germany and Switzerland, which it says could happen in the early 2030s (The Guardian, 10 June 2025). That timing lines up with Virgin's 2030 launch, so the two could end up competing on even more routes.
Virgin Trains has already bought trains for the project. The company ordered 12 high-speed trains from a manufacturer called Alstom, to be ready by 2030 (The Guardian, 26 August 2025). That order was placed before final approval came through, showing Virgin felt confident the regulator would say yes.
There's still a lot to sort out. The ORR's approval only covers the UK side of the journey. Virgin Trains also needs permission to use the train tracks in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and must pass safety checks from regulators in both the UK and those EU countries (The Guardian, 17 August 2026). Each country has its own signalling systems and safety rules. The 2030 start date gives about four years to get all of that done.
The bigger picture is that international rail travel in Europe has been slow to open up to competition. The Channel Tunnel's setup — one high-speed line on the UK side and very little space for storing trains — made it hard for anyone new to break in, which helped Eurostar keep its advantage. The ORR has now cleared the UK-side obstacles, but the approvals needed on the continent will show whether regulators there can move fast enough.
For travellers, having two companies on the same routes could mean lower ticket prices and more trains to choose from. For Eurostar, the market it has controlled for over thirty years is about to change, even as it plans its own expansion to Germany and Switzerland. Whether both companies can survive on the same routes is something we'll start learning in 2030.
