The street view looking towards the opposite end of Paris Nord to that used by Eurostar

Lille to Paris by train

How to take the rail journey from Lille to Paris

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Routes

From Lille Flandres to Paris Gare Du Nord/Paris Nord

Travel Information

Final Destination: Paris Gare Du Nord

Monday - Thursday = 17 x trains per day
Friday = 18 x trains
Saturday = 10 x trains
Sunday = 11 x trains
There are not departures in every hour

Tickets

Book early and save: Yes

Online bookings usually open: up to 6 months ahead of the travel date.

When booking 2nd class tickets only one type of ticket will be available per departure, discounted 'Prems' tickets or 'Seconde' tickets; though the price of Seconde tickets are also typically cheaper when they are first placed on sale.
When booking 1st class tickets there will be a choice of Premiere tickets and Business Premiere tickets.

The two key T&Cs of booking Prems, Seconde, or Premiere tickets are:

  1. Up until two days prior to departure, these types of tickets can be refunded for no additional charge (big tick), but a €15 fee will be payable for making a refund in the two days prior to departure.
  2. It's also possible to exchange tickets to an alternative departure on the same journey, but you will have to pay any difference in price between the cost you paid and the cost at the time of the exchange.

Though if you book Business Premiere tickets, the key T&Cs are that tickets can be exchanged and refunded free of charge up to 30 minutes after departure, so if you get to the station just too late to miss the train you were originally booked on to, you won't lose out financially.

Seats will automatically be assigned when booking tickets for this journey, but rail pass users will need to be pay a reservation fee prior to boarding these TGV trains.

The price is dictated by demand per departure, so book ahead and try and be flexible re: your departure and arrival times, as trains leaving earlier or later can be cheaper.

To see the full range of prices on this route, don't use a specific station in Lille when looking up this journey, select Lille as a city
.
Unless you specifically want to depart from Lille Europe or Lille Flandres stations; there are direct trains from the capital from both stations, though the fastest and more frequent trains depart from Lille Flandres.

The lower cost Ouigo services are not available when travelling city centre to city center on the Lille to Paris route.

Where to book
Ticket Provider Approximate Cost
SNCF Connect from €15

SNCF Connect Guide

SNCF is the national rail operator in France and not so long ago it recently simplified both the range of tickets and the term and conditions of using them.
Therefore the cheapest tickets also become more flexible too.

Other improvements included a simple integration of travelling with bicycles and rail pass users being able to book reservations for national journeys, without paying booking fees.

And it also recently launched SNCF Connect as replacement for its Oui.SNCF booking service.
You can set up a low price alert to let you know when the cheapest price is available for a future journey.

Something else to look out for is that simplest way of travelling with tickets is to use the SNCF Connect App, as booked tickets can therefore be stored on your mobile device, which can then be shown to the train conductors as proof of purchase.

SNCF Connect on Google Play

SNCF Connect in the App (Apple) store

SNCF also operates RailEurope, which is in effect a dedicated online booking service for making bookings from outside of Europe.
If you reside outside of Europe you may discover that SNCF Connect rejects phone numbers or card numbers, but RailEurope won't do so.
Though RailEurope will add booking fees when making a purchase

Download the SNCF Connect App from €15
Happy rail from €15

Happy rail Guide

Happy Rail is a Netherlands rail ticket agency which sells tickets for both national and international journeys within a range of countries including Belgium France, Germany, Sweden, Switzerland.

HappyRail doesn't charge booking fees in the conventional sense, but if you're not Dutch you can expect to pay additional transaction fees, which will be added to the total cost.
That's because the most common form of online payment used in The Netherlands is 'iDEAL' and HappyRail doesn't charge a transaction fee for 'iDEAL' payments, but only Dutch residents can sign up to 'iDEAL'.
Other forms of payment include Visa debit cards will incur a fee.

Save A Train from €15

Save A Train Guide

Trainline from €15

Trainline Guide

Rail Europe from €15

On this journey

Journey Features

High Speed (total journey)

Good to Know

The train service from Lille to Paris was fundamentally altered back in 2020.
All of these non-stop trains from Lille to Paris now depart from Lille Flandres station,
This was always the station in Lille with the most frequent service of trains to the French capital, but now it also has the quickest trains.

What changed is that the trains to Paris from some of the locations to the north of Lille, such as Boulogne and Dunkerque, which depart from Lille Europe station - the city's other main station, now take a slower route.
They divert off of the direct high speed route to call at Arras, because that city isn't on the high speed line.

This route, which is also followed on Monday to Fridays by the first departure of the day from Lille Flandres station, has a typical journey time of 1hr 17mins, so those trains are now 15mins slower than these trains.

The journey time won't impact on the ticket price, the but the cheaper tickets are likely to sell out faster on the more popular departures, meaning that taking those trains from Lille Europe can be cheaper.
So if Lille Europe is a convenient departure station and you don't mind an additional 15-20 mins of train travel, those trains can be worth considering.

Particularly on Sundays those trains from Lille Europe can plug gaps between departures of these trains which leave from Lille Flandres station.
Two of the four trains which depart for Paris on Sundays before 13:00 leave from Lille Europe.

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