Official City Rail Link opening date: all you need to know

Auckland's long-awaited City Rail Link (CRL) will open to passengers on the second Sunday of September 2026.

New Zealand's largest infrastructure project will open on September 13, according to an Auckland Transport billboard in Auckland this morning — hours ahead of the official announcement.

Auckland Transport told 1News the billboard had gone up in error - it was supposed to have gone live after the announcement.

Transport Minister Chris Bishop and Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown made the official announcement at Karangahape Rd station, but when Bishop got up to speak, he fumbled the reveal a second time.

"The Mayor and I are thrilled to announce this morning that CRL will open on Friday, September 13. Oh, sorry, Sunday," he said, correcting himself to laughs from those gathered.

"CRL will open on Sunday, September 13, and there'll be an official ribbon cutting a couple of days before."

Auckland Mayor Wayne Brown saw the funny side of the whole mixed-up morning, joking to reporters: "People have been asking me for years when the CRL was going to open, and finally we did something ahead of time. We announced it this morning, accidentally."

Today's release ends months, if not years, of speculation over when the $5.5 billion underground train tunnel and three new stations would finally take passengers.

The first day of services will feature special first trains on each of the new lines, with extra staff deployed across the network to help passengers navigate the redrawn system, Auckland Transport (AT) has previously said.

But challenges remain for the project, which will open on a reduced "transitional" timetable and faces the task of rebuilding public trust after years of rail disruption.

READ MORE: Two key City Rail Link commitments confirmed ahead of opening

The opening date has proved unusually elusive for Aucklanders and elected officials.

As recently as last week, officials at an Auckland Council infrastructure committee meeting asked not to be questioned about it, telling frustrated councillors only that a date was coming "in the coming weeks".

Behind the scenes, two hurdles had remained, with councillors told officials were still "closing out recommendations and outcomes from emergency services tests" and awaiting final safety certifications from the NZ Transport Agency.

The project reached construction completion in late June — substantially finished, insured, and handed over to KiwiRail and local authorities for operation.

READ MORE: Frustration growing as City Rail Link opening date still elusive

The first trains will run on a Sunday, a quieter day chosen to let the new network bed in before its first Monday rush hour.

AT earlier said extra trains will run above the normal Sunday timetable on September 13 "to accommodate demand from people wanting to check out the new network."

Early morning first trains will offer opportunities for media and train enthusiasts, with crowd control planned at stations expected to be busy.

Aucklanders wanting a look before then have another chance, with public open days at the new stations running through early-to-mid August.

For anyone who has not caught a train in a while, the basics have not changed.

The CRL is not a separate new railway. It is a 3.5km tunnel under the CBD that joins Auckland's existing suburban train lines together, with two new underground stations at Te Waihorotiu, near the Sky Tower, and Karanga-a-Hape off Karangahape Rd.

Until now, every train into the city has terminated at the downtown Britomart station, a dead end that limited how many services could run regionwide.

The CRL tunnel turns Britomart, renamed Waitematā, into a through-station, so trains can travel under the city centre and out the other side.

That means the lines Aucklanders know are being redrawn and renamed.

From September 13, the Eastern, Western, Southern and Onehunga lines are replaced by three cross-city routes: the East-West, South-City and Onehunga-West lines.

The trains and suburban stations stay the same, but where they go changes, and most passengers will need to replan their journeys. Commuters at most local suburban stations can expect a train at least every 15 minutes at rush hour and throughout the day.

READ MORE: Going underground to find the City Rail Link's winners and losers

Beneath the city centre, where the lines combine, a train will run through the tunnel around every four minutes at peak.

The changes deliver the biggest gains to West Auckland.

Trains from the west currently reverse out of Newmarket on their way into the city, and the tunnel's more direct route cuts trip times significantly.

But the CRL will open on a reduced "transitional" timetable, after network-wide testing ran into congestion at rail junctions and forced officials to rework initial day one plans.

Test trains first ran through the finished tunnels in February 2025, but full-scale rehearsal testing didn't take place until January this year.

Most suburban stations will keep today's six trains an hour at peak rather than the eight tested earlier this year, with gaps between services stretching to as long as 15 minutes.

AT has committed to building up to a full timetable "within six months" of opening, including extending western line peak services to trains every eight minutes.

Transport advocates have questioned the uneven spacing of services. Greater Auckland director Matt Lowrie said in March: "You're going to have some services, where you might have six or seven minutes between trains, and then you'll have nothing for 15 minutes."

The opening caps a long build, with a well-publicised 2024 opening pushed back two years following delays attributed to the Covid-19 pandemic.

But City Rail Link Ltd chairperson John Bridgman defended the project's record at Parliament's transport select committee in May, describing the CRL as "the biggest transport transformation in Auckland since the Harbour Bridge".

"Everyone says this project is late. Yes, we're not up to the projected timelines, but we're only six months late in a nine-year project," he said.

The idea of an underground rail line through Central Auckland is nearly as old as the city's railways themselves. Schemes for a city tunnel were floated as far back as the 1920s.

That scheme didn't end up happening, and further attempts, including one linked to mayor Dove-Myer Robinson's "rapid rail" push in the 1970s, met the same fate.

The modern project took shape after Britomart opened as a dead-end station in 2003, capping how many trains could run into the city.

The first supercity mayor of Auckland, Len Brown, made the link his signature cause after councils amalgamated in 2010, and John Key's government confirmed a funding split with the council in 2016, the same year early works began tearing up Lower Queen St.

The subsequent Labour government committed more money to the project for futureproofing and to add a new station entrance at a Karangahape Rd station — near where today's opening date announcement was made.

Costed at around $2.9 billion when early works began in 2016, the budget was reset to $4.4 billion in 2019 and has since grown to $5.5 billion.

Officials said earlier this year they didn't anticipate any further cost increases.