SNCF Connect quietly updated its passenger-information FAQ on 15 July 2026, formalising a requirement that all travellers between France and the United Kingdom must file Advance Passenger Information (API) through their Eurostar booking. The move aligns rail travel with long-standing airline protocols and follows a request from the UK Home Office to improve pre-departure security screening. Under the new rule, each passenger’s full name, date of birth, passport number, nationality and gender must be submitted online before departure. Failure to register may result in boarding denial at Paris-Nord, Lille, Calais-Fréthun or London St Pancras. SNCF advises arriving at least 60 minutes before departure to allow document verification. For corporate mobility teams, the API mandate introduces an additional compliance step akin to the US ESTA or UK Electronic Travel Authorisation (ETA). Companies should integrate API capture into their trip-approval workflows and ensure that employee data is handled in accordance with GDPR. Group bookings may be especially cumbersome because every traveller must be entered individually. The change foreshadows a broader shift toward multimodal data-sharing between carriers and border agencies as the EU prepares for the full launch of EES and ETIAS. Rail operators, once exempt from many aviation-style requirements, are rapidly adopting similar security layers—raising operational costs but promising smoother border crossings once systems mature. Travellers returning to France are unaffected by API on the French side, but UK Border Force may deny entry to those whose data is incomplete. Frequent commuters are urged to create Eurostar profiles to store passport details and avoid repetitive manual entry.
