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. Gallarate to the airport now takes 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 ticket between Gallarate and Malpensa costs €7.
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.
What it does not solve
Two things are worth being clear about before you rearrange a trip around it.
The link serves Terminal 2. Malpensa's two terminals are about a five-minute shuttle apart and the Malpensa Express calls at both, but if your flight leaves from Terminal 1 you have a transfer at the end of the rail leg. Build it into the plan rather than discovering it with a bag in each hand.
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.
