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I will be travelling from London to Brussels on the Eurostar next week and wondered if our tickets are checked/scanned when we arrive and depart the train? As I have a connecting train to catch shortly after and I know these can take some time when there are lots of people. Thank you for any help you can give!

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    I have not left Eurostar in Brussels in a few years but in both London and Amsterdam you can just walk out. (There is a customs area in London, but it is mostly just walk past.)
    – Willeke ♦
    Commented Mar 4, 2023 at 17:55
  • How short is your connection? 20 minutes should work, 5 minutes not so.
    – gerrit
    Commented Mar 6, 2023 at 8:39
  • What is your connecting train? If it’s a domestic one you have nothing to worry about as you can just take the next one if you miss it.
    – Krist van Besien
    Commented Mar 6, 2023 at 10:59

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No, there's no ticket check when leaving the Eurostar at Brussels or any other station. Ticket checks are always performed before boarding.

However it can be slow getting out if the train is busy, just because of the number of people getting off the train with luggage and shuffling down the platform. I recently did a 15 minute interchange (arrive 16:07, depart 16:22) for the onward train to Cologne and only just made it because of that. So it depends on how busy you expect the train to be and what your appetite for risk is.

You can mitigate this a bit by choosing a seat as close to the Brussels end of the train as possible. The seat picker online tells you the direction. You can't choose a seat at booking but you can change it once you have booked up to a few hours before departure.

There are reportedly occasionally spot checks of passports but I have never seen this in the handful of times I've done the journey.

Also 2 useful tips from seat61.com

  1. "Even though the system sells you separate tickets either side of Brussels, you are protected by the Railteam Promise/HOTNAT so if there's a delay and you miss the connection you will be allowed to travel on later onwards trains at no extra charge." From How to buy tickets

  2. Short cut to other platforms from Eurostar platforms

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    Indeed, an e300 has 750 seats and an e320 nearly 900. Even though Eurostar say they can’t fill them up to capacity at the moment, that’s still a LOT of people clumsily trying to get out of the trains, along the platform and down. Both trains are also nearly 400 meters long.
    – jcaron
    Commented Mar 5, 2023 at 23:26
  • I would suggest if you're on the ball with getting off the train then a 15 minute connection is no problem, but if you're the sort who faffs or are generally slower then yeah, maybe the connection's gonna be harder to achieve. Personally I made the 15 minute connection easily when I last did it, though I had previously made sure I was at the right end of the train.
    – Muzer
    Commented Mar 7, 2023 at 15:56

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