Trains will run over the Gotthardberg line in January 2026
Keystone-SDA
Due to construction work in the Gotthard Base Tunnel, Swiss train passengers will have to accept longer journey times in the second half of January 2026. Almost all trains will then travel via the mountain route.
+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox
As Swiss Federal Railways announced, work will be carried out around the clock in the 57-kilometre tunnel from January 12 to 23, 2026. Almost all EC and IC trains will then be rerouted via the old panoramic route.
+ Read more: why is the Gotthard Base Tunnel so important?
For passengers, this means that the journey will take around an hour longer. Exceptions to this are early and late connections and trains travelling between Germany and Italy. These trains will travel through the base tunnel. Goods trains can also use the base tunnel with reduced capacity.
Swiss Railways justified the long closure of the tunnel with maintenance work. Some of this work is carried out on weekend nights. However, these eight-hour intervals are not sufficient for certain work.
For more extensive work, a third of the tunnel can therefore be closed continuously for several days at predetermined intervals.
The upcoming renewal work involves the tunnel radio, which will be replaced in stages between 2024 and 2027.
The tunnel radio was already in operation before the tunnel opened in 2026 and has reached the end of its service life.
More
More
Swiss Gotthard tunnel expansion could cost extra CHF20m
Translated from German by DeepL/mga
We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.
Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.
If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at english@swissinfo.ch
