Halfway through 2026, Rail Baltica — the €5.8 billion high-speed line meant to link Tallinn, Riga and Kaunas to the rest of the European rail network — is once again at a point where the trend line matters more than any single milestone: is the project accelerating toward its revised 2030 target, or slipping further behind?

Key Facts
  • Roughly 46% of the mainline’s civil works are complete as of June 2026, per RB Rail estimates
  • The project’s full opening target has shifted from 2026 to 2030 since planning began in 2017
  • Total estimated cost has risen to approximately €5.8 billion, up from earlier estimates near €5.1 billion
  • The EU’s Connecting Europe Facility is funding roughly 85% of eligible cross-border costs

A slow build toward visible progress

For years, Rail Baltica’s story was one of land acquisition disputes and slow-moving tenders. That trend appears to be reversing. Bridge and viaduct construction near Kaunas and around the Riga Central hub has become visibly active over the past 18 months, and RB Rail, the joint venture managing the project, says the share of contracted works has grown from roughly 60% in 2024 to over 80% today.

Where the trend still points the wrong way

Costs remain the project’s most persistent problem. Estimates have crept upward almost every year since 2017, and this year is no exception: a joint review by the three governments in the spring pushed the total budget from roughly €5.1 billion to €5.8 billion, citing higher steel and labour costs. Lithuania’s transport ministry has also flagged that its section through Kaunas is running roughly a year behind Latvia’s and Estonia’s more advanced sections. Comparisons with other EU cross-border rail projects, such as the delayed Lyon–Turin tunnel, suggest Rail Baltica’s cost growth — roughly 14% over two years — is not unusual for infrastructure of this scale, though it does little to reassure taxpayers in Vilnius, Riga and Tallinn who have watched the completion date move twice already.

Why Brussels keeps backing it anyway

Despite the overruns, the European Commission has shown no sign of pulling back its Connecting Europe Facility support, which covers the bulk of eligible cross-border costs. Officials in Brussels frame Rail Baltica less as a single national infrastructure project and more as a strategic link — one that, alongside its civilian freight and passenger role, has taken on added military-mobility significance as NATO looks to move troops and equipment faster across the alliance’s eastern flank, a priority expected to feature heavily at next week’s NATO summit in Ankara.

The next 18 months

Agnis Driksna, an RB Rail spokesperson, said the coming period is about converting completed civil works into an operating railway. “The next milestone that matters to ordinary passengers isn’t a groundbreaking ceremony, it’s the first test trains running on completed sections, which we expect to start in late 2027,” Driksna said.

Until then, the trend most worth watching is the gap between the sections furthest along — largely in Estonia and Latvia — and Lithuania’s Kaunas hub, which officials increasingly acknowledge could determine whether the whole line opens as a single connected route in 2030 or in staggered stages over the following two years.