Malpensa's New Rail Link: Eight Minutes from Gallarate
Milan Malpensa spent years being awkward to reach from anywhere except Milan itself. Arriving from the north, from Varese, or from across the Swiss border meant either a car or a rail journey that went the long way round through the city. A new stretch of track opened on 23 January 2026 has changed that, and the improvement is larger than the four and a half kilometres of rail involved would suggest.
What was built
Ferrovienord laid a double-track connection from Terminal 2 to the Gallarate junction on the Simplon line, 4.6 kilometres of new railway at a cost of €264 million, part financed by the European Union. A further 1.1-kilometre spur towards Casorate Sempione is planned as a second phase.
The timing was not accidental. The link opened shortly before the Milano-Cortina Winter Olympics, which put a large number of visitors through this airport in a short window.
What it does to journey times
The headline number is the one that matters. Ferrovienord, which built the line, puts Gallarate to the airport at eight minutes. Before the link opened, the same journey took around half an hour.
Trenord's Malpensa Express services from Milano Centrale no longer terminate at the airport. They continue through to Gallarate, which turns the airport from an end of the line into a station on a route. From Gallarate, departures run every half hour at 24 and 54 minutes past, with the first at 05:24 and the last at 23:24.
A single Trenord ticket between Gallarate and Malpensa costs €7.
The timetable in both directions
The line is numbered RE51 and runs Milano Centrale to Malpensa to Gallarate. Ferrovienord published the pattern on the day it opened: one train every 30 minutes in each direction. Southbound from Milano Centrale, departures leave at 25 and 55 minutes past the hour between 04:55 and 23:25. Northbound from Gallarate, departures run at 24 and 54 minutes past, between 05:24 and 23:24.
Those two windows are the real limit of the service. A flight leaving Malpensa at 06:30 is reachable by train from Gallarate. One leaving at 06:00 is not, and neither is an arrival that clears the terminal after midnight.
Ferrovienord strengthened the evening and night service on the line from the opening until 24 February 2026, for the Milano Cortina Winter Olympics. That reinforcement has ended, so a timetable screenshot taken in February does not describe what runs now.
What Gallarate connects to
The junction is the point of the whole exercise. Gallarate sits on the Simplon line between Milan and Domodossola, where trains cross into Switzerland through the Simplon tunnel, and it is the interchange for the Varese and Laveno branches.
In practice that means a traveller starting in Varese, Busto Arsizio, Domodossola or on the Swiss side of the border now reaches the airport with one change at a station they were already passing through, instead of a detour into Milan and back out again. For journeys from the Lake Maggiore shore, that change replaces a road transfer of an hour or more.
Who paid for it
Ferrovienord puts the cost at €264,553,700, and its funding list is worth reading, because it explains why 4.6 kilometres of track took as long as it did. Just under €87 million came from the Patto per la Lombardia, €63.4 million, or 30 percent of the total, from the European Union Connecting Europe Facility for transport, €55.9 million from the Italian Ministry of Infrastructure, €46.2 million through a government decree of 8 September 2023, €11 million from the Lombardy region, and €1 million from SEA, the airport operator.
A second phase is planned: a 1.1 kilometre spur towards Casorate Sempione, which would also open the airport to services approaching from the other direction on the Sempione line. No opening date has been published for it.
Who this actually helps
If you are travelling between central Milan and the airport, very little has changed. The Malpensa Express already did that job and still does.
The people who gain are everyone approaching from the other direction. Gallarate sits on the Simplon line, which runs north towards Domodossola and the Swiss border, and west across the Varese province. A traveller coming from Stresa, Domodossola or the Swiss side previously faced a connection through Milan or a long road transfer. Now the airport is a short hop from a junction they were passing through anyway.
Anyone based in the Varese area gains the same way, and so does anyone whose onward journey continues north rather than back into the city.
The Swiss angle
One cross-border service reached the airport before any of this. Tilo's S50 connects Malpensa with Canton Ticino, running from Biasca by way of Bellinzona, Lugano, Mendrisio, Varese and Gallarate, which is why passengers from Lugano have long had a one-seat option the rest of the north lacked.
What the new track changes for that corridor is the fallback. When the S50 timetable does not fit, a passenger can now take any Simplon-line service to Gallarate and step across to a Malpensa Express, instead of routing through Milan and back out. Trains from Milano Centrale run through both terminals every 30 minutes until 23:25, so that change rarely costs more than half an hour of waiting.
What it does not solve
Two things are worth being clear about before you rearrange a trip around it.
The link is named after Terminal 2 because that is where it meets the airport, but the trains do not stop there. Malpensa Express services call at both terminals: Gallarate to Terminal 2 takes 8 minutes, Gallarate to Terminal 1 takes 15. Neither number involves a shuttle.
The shuttle only matters if you land at one terminal and fly from the other. The airport's own page gives it as running 24 hours a day, roughly every seven minutes during the day and roughly every 30 minutes between 22:45 and 05:15.
The service also stops overnight. A last departure at 23:24 from Gallarate covers most scheduled flights, but a delayed arrival at half past midnight is a road journey whatever the timetable says. Malpensa is roughly 50 kilometres from central Milan, which is a meaningful distance to cover by taxi at that hour.
How it compares with the road
For one or two people travelling in daylight with ordinary luggage, rail is now the sensible default on almost every approach to this airport. The €7 fare from Gallarate and the frequency of the Malpensa Express make the arithmetic straightforward.
Road transport keeps its advantages in the situations it always had. Groups of four or more, early departures before the first train, arrivals after the last one, ski equipment or oversized bags, and destinations in the lakes region that no railway reaches. On those, a fixed price agreed before departure is worth more than a timetable.
Check the date on anything you read
The practical warning for this route is the same one that applies across European airport transport this year. Guides written before January 2026 describe an airport that was genuinely difficult to reach from the north, and that description is now wrong. If a route plan you are reading routes you through Milano Centrale to get to Malpensa from Varese or the Swiss border, it predates the link.
