ssaouira has just entered the map of Moroccan high-speed rail. Decree no. 2.26.605, signed on September 1, 2026 by head of government Aziz Akhannouch and countersigned by the minister of transport and logistics, Abdessamad Kayouh, declares that public utility requires the construction of a railway line for high-speed trains between Marrakech and Agadir on the one hand, and between Chichaoua and Essaouira on the other, within the jurisdiction of the Marrakech-Safi and Souss-Massa regions. The route is fixed by a site plan at 1/50,000 annexed to the original text, published in the Bulletin officiel under number 7541, and execution of the decree is entrusted to the minister of transport and logistics.
The decree builds nothing: it opens the land acquisitions and, where needed, the expropriations required along the route. It is nonetheless the act by which a long-announced service becomes a drawn right of way, fixed at the fifty-thousandth and enforceable. Essaouira had until now been no more than a hypothesis grafted onto the Marrakech-Agadir project; here it is in the body of a regulatory text, with Chichaoua as its junction. From land surveys to the first spade, the distance remains long, but the kingdom would have, on that first of September, stopped talking about a route and begun buying its ground.
Photo: إيان, CC BY-SA 4.0.
Secrétariat général du gouvernement - Bulletin officiel n° 7541, décret n° 2.26.605 du 19 rabii I 1448 (1er septembre 2026)
