Colombia advanced one of its most ambitious regional infrastructure projects in April 2026 when the CAF (Banco de Desarrollo de América Latina y el Caribe, the regional development bank) approved a non-reimbursable grant of US$3 million to fund the feasibility studies for the Tren del Café, a proposed 238-kilometer rail corridor linking the departments of Antioquia, Caldas, and Risaralda, with a full construction estimate of approximately COP$6 trillion (around US$1.61 billion).
The grant, which does not require repayment and therefore reduces the financial burden on the three participating regional governments, covers the technical, economic, and environmental analysis that must precede any construction contract, with Ferrocarriles de Antioquia acting as the executing agency for this study phase.
What the Tren del Café would connect
The corridor runs from Caimalito, in Risaralda, through Caldas and Antioquia all the way to Puerto Berrío in the Magdalena Medio region, a route that would physically link Colombia’s Pacific and Caribbean freight corridors for the first time through a single rail line, according to Risaralda Governor Juan Diego Patiño. The Eje Cafetero (Coffee Region) sits at the center of this geography and currently moves the bulk of its coffee, banana, and manufactured goods exports by road, a logistics dependency that keeps freight costs high and road infrastructure under chronic stress.
The Agencia Nacional de Infraestructura (ANI) has already awarded the Caimalito–La Felisa segment for detailed engineering studies, which gives the project a formal institutional footprint before its full feasibility work concludes, and the remaining study costs, beyond the CAF grant, will draw from the Sistema General de Regalías (the national royalties fund that distributes oil and mining revenues to regional governments for investment).
A project built on decades of rail absence
Colombia dismantled most of its national rail network through the 1990s, handing freight transport almost entirely to road carriers at a moment when the country’s Andean geography made that decision far more costly over the long run than it initially appeared, since trucks on mountain roads carry higher operating costs and more accident risk than rail on equivalent distances. The rails-and-regions vision behind the Tren del Café does not start from zero: it builds on the existing Ferrocarril de Antioquia corridor and proposes extending its reach into Caldas and Risaralda, two departments that the historical network never integrated fully.
Marcela Holguín, director of the Promotora Ferrocarril de Antioquia, confirmed that the three governors worked jointly to secure the CAF funding and that the feasibility structuring phase, estimated at COP$34 billion (approximately US$9.1 million), aims for completion in time to enable a public-private partnership (APP, a contract model where a private operator builds and runs infrastructure in exchange for long-term revenue rights) under the next round of regional administrations, which take office in January 2028.
What completion would mean for the region
Colombia’s case for the Tren del Café rests on freight capacity and regional integration rather than tourism alone, though the name and geography invite both, and analysts note that connecting Medellín’s industrial belt to the coffee-growing municipalities of Caldas and Risaralda by rail would reduce logistics costs for exporters by an estimated 30% to 40% compared with current road rates on the same corridors.
To this day, the project faces the same structural challenge that has stalled Colombian rail investment for 30 years: securing private capital commitments before studies conclude, convincing successive administrations to maintain continuity across electoral cycles, and navigating the environmental and community consultation requirements that apply to any linear infrastructure project crossing multiple departments. The CAF grant removes one barrier, but the rails-and-regions ambition behind the Tren del Café will still require political endurance well beyond any single governor’s term to reach the construction phase.