European Sleeper restarts Paris–Berlin night train with crowd funding
European Sleeper will restore the Paris–Berlin night-train connection on 26 March 2026, filling the gap left by ÖBB’s Nightjet withdrawal. The Dutch cooperative operator — backed by more than 4 000 citizen investors — will run the route three times weekly via Brussels.
The move follows France’s decision to end subsidies for ÖBB’s (Austrian Federal Railways) Paris routes in September, which led ÖBB to cancel the Nightjet service on 14 December.
European Sleeper, founded in 2021 by Chris Engelsman and Elmer van Buuren, has raised over EUR 5 million through sharefunding since launch and now operates the Brussels–Amsterdam–Berlin–Prague line, carrying more than 230 000 passengers a year.
Service will run three times weekly from March
The new route will operate Paris–Berlin on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Sundays, with return services on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays. Trains will use 12–14 leased 1990s-built coaches, offering capacity for 600–700 passengers per departure.
Tickets start from EUR 59 and go on sale 16 December 2025. The exact routing is being finalised with infrastructure managers in France, Belgium and Germany. There will be no dining car at launch, the company said, citing profitability constraints.
Citizen investors push Europe’s night-train frontier
European Sleeper has now opened its third sharefunding round to finance the Paris route. The cooperative model allows citizens to invest directly in expanding Europe’s night-train network, bypassing traditional state subsidies or institutional capital.
What it shows: European Sleeper’s existing Brussels–Berlin–Prague service, launched in 2023, has demonstrated sustained demand for cross-border night trains operated outside the networks of traditional state operators.
What it means: The Paris–Berlin restoration suggests that citizen-financed operators could become an important part of Europe’s rail renaissance — marking a shift in how the system is financed, if it succeeds.