Business 10 August 2026

Only two bidders are left in the race to sell CP its 300 km/h trains

France's Alstom and Spain's Talgo were the only companies to clear pre-qualification in CP's tender for 12 high-speed trains. They now have 90 days to file firm proposals, with a decision due late this year.

Two are left. Alstom of France and Talgo of Spain were the only companies to enter the pre-qualification stage of the tender CP launched in May to buy 12 high-speed trains, with submissions closing on 1 August.

The timetable from here is set. Both have 90 days to turn a qualification into a firm proposal with prices and delivery dates, and a decision is expected before the end of the year. The tender carries a base value above €500 million and can reach €850 million if CP takes up its option on eight further sets. Whoever wins also supplies spare parts and handles maintenance for the first two years in service.

The technical detail that will decide it

The specification calls for at least 500 seats per train and a top speed of 300 km/h. Nothing there troubles a European builder.

The awkward part is underneath. The bogies have to leave the factory in Iberian gauge, the wide track Portugal and Spain have used since the nineteenth century, but with the option of being swapped for European gauge later on. That double requirement, rather than the speed, is what squeezes the bidders: it means designing a train for the network that exists now and for the one the peninsula promises to have two decades from now.

Alstom is no stranger here. The company had already picked Matosinhos for a rail maintenance facility and leads the consortium supplying CP’s new suburban units. Talgo, for its part, brings the variable-gauge experience Spain has spent decades accumulating, which this tender all but asks for by name. The official framing of Portugal’s high-speed line, including the Porto–Lisbon section these trains will run on, sits on Infraestruturas de Portugal’s high-speed portal.

By Beatriz Mota

Photo: José Ignacio Esnarriaga San José / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

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