Travellers looking for a cheaper, albeit slower, option for travelling between Paris and Amsterdam will soon have a new alternative to Eurostar, with Dutch start-up GoVolta set to launch a daily train service.
The Dutch company began selling tickets on May 28th, with one-way fares starting from €19. Eurostar tickets for the same route start at €35, if they are booked well in advance.
The GoVolta service, which will launch later this year, is aimed at challenging Eurostar’s dominance on the route between the two European capitals.
The first trains will start running from December 14th, 2026 and will begin at Paris Gare Du Nord and end at Amsterdam central station.
Travellers looking for a quick trip should be aware the GoVolta service will take around seven hours, that’s around 3.5 hours longer than the Eurostar service, which takes roughly 3 hours, 30 minutes and makes fewer stops. The reason is mainly because the service will use slower trains on the normal tracks rather than the high-speed lines and make more stops than the Eurostar service.
Trains will stop at 11 stations in France, Belgium and the Netherlands, including Amiens, Ghent, Antwerp, Rotterdam and The Hague.
GoVolta says the route has been designed not only for travellers heading between Paris and Amsterdam, but also for passengers visiting smaller cities which currently have limited international rail connections.
One notable omission is Brussels – which is on the Eurostar route.
Instead, the operator has chosen to serve Ghent, one of Belgium’s largest cities, which currently lacks a direct international rail link to either Paris or Amsterdam. The service will also restore a direct international connection to The Hague, which lost its direct Paris link when Thalys, now part of Eurostar, withdrew from the route.
According to the published timetable, trains will leave Paris shortly before 4pm and arrive in Amsterdam at around 11.30pm. Services in the other direction will depart Amsterdam just before 8am, reaching Paris just before 3pm.
Bookings are already available until December 2027.
For shorter cross-border journeys, including routes between France and Belgium or Belgium and the Netherlands, fares will start at €10.
The trains will have capacity for up to 840 passengers, with nine Economy-class carriages, one Comfort-class carriage and a dining car.
The Paris-Amsterdam service follows GoVolta’s first international route, launched in March 2026 between Amsterdam and Berlin. The company says it has already carried more than 90,000 passengers on its Dutch-German services.
Passengers can also choose a “flexible dates” option, allowing them to change their travel date up to 14 days before departure for an additional €1.
