SNCF subsidiary Eurostar said it plans to open new destinations "in the early 2030s."
Thanks to the arrival of new trains, there will be two connections between London and Geneva and London and Frankfurt, as well as another between Amsterdam and Geneva, AFP reports.
Eurostar plans to acquire up to 50 new trains to run through the Channel Tunnel by 2030 and has set a target of carrying 30 million passengers a year by the end of the decade.
"Demand for rail travel in Europe is strong, with customers wanting to travel further by train than ever before," said Eurostar managing director Gwendoline Cazenave.
For the first time, the company will offer direct services between the UK and Switzerland and Germany.
Announcements of new services between London and the continent have been fairly rare due to the need to open the British border at the relevant stations and employ British police officers to carry out checks.
The last such was in 2020 when the London-Amsterdam line was opened. At the end of 2023, Eurotunnel announced that market and development studies had been completed for stations in Frankfurt and Cologne, inviting operators to launch in new destinations.
The Channel Tunnel operator sees a potential of two million passengers a year between London and Germany.
For Geneva, the potential is one million passengers a year, again according to Eurotunnel.
Thanks to the new trains, Eurostar hopes to increase frequencies between London and Paris to attract a further two million passengers a year on this route.
The company currently has 51 trains, 25 of which are used for cross-Channel services.
The London-Amsterdam route will also be boosted, with five return journeys a day by December, up from the current three.
Eurostar made these announcements at the same time as publishing its financial results for 2024, with sales of €2 billion, up 2% year-on-year.
Some 19.5 million passengers boarded Eurostar trains last year, up 5% from 2023. The company specialises in international services between France, the UK and the Benelux countries. The majority owner of the company is SNCF Voyageurs.
Other companies with ambitions to use the Channel Tunnel to compete with Eurostar include Trenitalia and Virgin by 2029 | BGNES