Is Deutsche Bahn planning a direct ICE high-speed train link from Cologne in North Rhine-Westphalia to Ostend in West Flanders? VagonWeb, the leading website from Czechia that collects train compositions throughout Europe, thinks so.
“There are plans for a ninth ICE service between Cologne and Brussels during the summer months. It was originally intended to extend this service to Ostend, but the ideas are now leaning more towards Ghent and Bruges“, Het Groot Belgisch Treinen Forum (The Big Belgian Train Forum) user FLV-FGSP says.
Summer trains
The service would start on 1 June 2026 and would be seasonal, running to 31 August 2026.
VagonWeb gives a tentative timetables. A departure from Köln Hauptbahnhof at 10:43, call at Aachen Hauptbahnhof, Liège-Guillemins, and Brussels-Midi/Zuid and terminate at Oostende at 13:44. A 3-hour trip.
The return journey would start in Ostend at 14:15 and arrive at Cologne Main Station at 17:15.
As mentioned, Oostend might not be the terminus. Bruges or Ghent St. Peter’s, both situated before Ostend from German perspective, are also considered.
Germans and the Belgian coast
Tourism figures for the Belgian coast are usually abundant, but one statistic remains surprisingly hard to pin down: how many Germans actually holiday at the coast? The North Sea at West Flanders is closer to many Germans living in the west of the country than the North Sea near Frisia Baltic Sea.
A closer look at the available data shows that, despite the importance of German visitors to Belgian tourism as a whole, no public source breaks their numbers out specifically for the coastal region. Still, using official statistics, it is possible to sketch a well-founded estimate – and to show clearly where the uncertainties lie.
The starting point is solid. In 2024, the Belgian coast recorded 7.9 million overnight stays, according to regional tourism data. Statbel, Belgium’s national statistics office, also provides a detailed breakdown of overnight stays in Flanders by nationality. Here, German travellers accounted for 2.26 million overnight stays, or just over eight per cent of all stays in the Flemish Region.
Because no coastal authority publishes a nationality breakdown, the only way to estimate the German contribution to the coast is to apply proportional reasoning. One method assumes that Germans are present at the coast in the same share as they are across Flanders — roughly eight per cent. Applied to the coast’s 7.9 million nights, this produces a figure of around 630,000 German overnight stays.
A second method uses the share of foreign visitors at the coast. In recent years, Westtoer has indicated that foreign guests represent a relatively modest proportion of coastal tourism, often around 12 to 13% of all nights.
Using 13% as a working figure gives a pool of just over one million foreign overnight stays. If Germans make up the same share of foreign visitors at the coast as they do of foreign visitors to Flanders overall – about 19% – the estimate comes out much lower, at roughly 190,000 German overnight stays.
Both methods rely on assumptions, because the real distribution of nationalities at the coast is not publicly reported. The truth therefore lies somewhere between these two calculated extremes.
What the data does show clearly is that Germans remain an important segment of Belgium’s inbound tourism, and that they almost certainly form one of the larger foreign groups at the coast — but no official source currently tells us exactly how large that group is.
Until Westtoer or Statbel begin releasing coast-specific nationality data, any attempt to measure German tourism at the Belgian seaside will remain an educated estimate rather than a confirmed statistic.
So?
Technically, it’s perfectly possible. Deutsche Bahn already runs trains from Germany to Belgium. Will it happen? Maybe. Expect an official announcement in the spring of 2026.
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