Linkeroever, the Left Bank, is the part of Antwerp that the river makes you think about. Its 16,545 residents, counted in 2021 on 10.11 square kilometres, have four tunnels under the Scheldt to the rest of the city: a pedestrian tunnel from 1933, two road tunnels, and a tram tunnel from 1975. Since 4 May 2026 the tram tunnel has been shut, and the neighbourhood has had to find other ways across.

From polder to district

Before it had its present name, the area was the Borger Weert Polder, part of the municipality of Zwijndrecht. It was attached to the city of Antwerp on 19 March 1923. A fixed crossing had been agreed in principle as early as 1874, but bridge plans kept being rejected because they would block the shipping, and in 1931 the choice fell on a tunnel. Work on the Sint-Anna pedestrian tunnel began on 28 June 1931 and finished on 14 August 1933.

The Sint-Anna tunnel is still the most pleasant way over, or rather under. It runs 572 metres at a depth of 31.5 metres, and the architect Emiel Van Averbeke designed its two entrance buildings. Its escalators still have 1,600 wooden steps, each weighing 40 kilos, and they are serviced every Thursday from seven in the morning to about seven at night, when the steps are taken out one by one and put back in exactly the same place. Between 3.5 and 4 million people use it a year, according to Kris Henau, formerly in charge of its maintenance at the Flemish roads agency. A visitor from Zandhoven, Staf Marivoet, put the case for the wooden steps to Belga simply: “It’s 90 years old. We cannot replace it. We should keep it in good shape.”

The district’s best-known building is the Chicagoblok, part of the Europark estate; the neighbourhood’s service centre, Dienstencentrum Linkeroever, stands in its shadow. Around the Frederik van Eedenplein, the square at the Left Bank end of the tram tunnel, are the shops that keep a neighbourhood going: the newsagent Mus, the bakeries Pain D’or and Den Bezekoek, and Slagerij De Boever, the butcher.

A year without the tram tunnel

De Lijn closed the premetro tunnel between Central Station and the Frederik van Eedenplein on 4 May 2026 for a renovation; the tunnel dates from 1975. The plan was to reopen in spring 2027. In September De Lijn moved the date to 10 July 2027, after workers found more asbestos than expected, some of it under concrete barriers and deeper than anyone had planned for. “More asbestos has been found in unforeseen places,” said Frederik Wittock, De Lijn’s spokesman. Annick De Ridder, the Flemish minister for mobility, called it “a particularly annoying setback.”

The replacements are a mixed bag. Three ferries run between the Steenplein and Linkeroever every ten minutes from 7:00 to 19:00 and every half hour outside those hours, through the night. Shuttle buses run from the Van Eedenplein to the Operaplein. And Antwerpen-Linkeroever railway station, opened in 1970 and closed in the 1980s for want of passengers, reopened on 2 May 2026 as a temporary stop on the S34 to Dendermonde and the weekday intercity to De Panne. By June it was handling an average of 530 passengers a weekday, more than double the fewer than 200 that got it closed.

The day after the closure, VRT went round the Van Eedenplein and heard, in Dutch, both sides. Frans Thomas, 90, a customer at the newsagent’s, was unbothered: “Mark my words, in a month nobody here will be complaining about the tunnel closing.” Els Mus, behind the counter, was less sure: “It is and will remain very hard for our residents who are less steady on their feet.” Patricia de Grave, at the reception of the service centre, said what many visitors find: “Nobody knows where the station on Linkeroever is. It isn’t clearly signposted anywhere.”

Linkeroever needs a crossing that does not depend on a hole in the ground, and it is getting one. Flanders has approved a bridge for cyclists and pedestrians of about 1,080 metres from Nieuw Zuid on the right bank to the Left Bank cycle network, with sections that open for the roughly 1,000 seagoing ships that pass each year. It is expected to cost at least €250m, paid from the Oosterweel liveability fund, with completion targeted for 2030.

The green half

The part of Linkeroever that changed most in 2026 is the green part. On 9 August the city opened Ringpark West, the first of seven ring parks planned around Antwerp: more than 500 hectares of woodland and nature between Linkeroever and Zwijndrecht, over 300 of them protected, joining the Sint-Annabos, the Middenvijver, the Galgenweel, the Burchtse Weel and Blokkersdijk with bridges, passages and restored streams. The city counts 16.5 kilometres of new cycle network. New noise barriers and earth berms along the motorway have brought noise in nearby streets down by up to 10 decibels, according to Alexander D’Hooghe, the intendant behind the ring parks.

Along the river, the Scheldt banks are being rebuilt in three sections from the Sint-Annabos to Burcht, after De Vlaamse Waterweg raises the dikes under the Sigma flood plan. The result is meant to be a riverside walk of about six kilometres. The Sint-Annastrand, the city’s river beach, needed 5,400 cubic metres of sand from Breskens, in the Netherlands, in May 2025, at a cost of €124,000, after erosion exposed the concrete underneath. The beach lies in a bend of a tidal river where the water rises and falls by four to five metres, and ships now have a speed limit and a ban on overtaking as they pass it.

For the Antwerp 10 Miles on 18 April 2027, De Lijn says it is taking the race into account in its planning. The rest of Linkeroever is simply waiting for its tram.