Circle Line Stage 6 Opens, Completing Singapore’s First Orbital MRT Line

The Circle Line Stage 6 officially opened for passenger service on 12 July 2026, completing Singapore’s first orbital MRT loop.

The 4 km extension adds three underground stations—Keppel, Cantonment and Prince Edward Road—between HarbourFront and Marina Bay, completing the Circle Line and forming Singapore’s first orbital MRT line. The extension enables through services around the full loop and provides a direct rail connection between the south-western and south-eastern parts of Singapore without requiring passengers to transfer via the city centre.

Three New MRT Stations

The 4km extension adds three brand-new underground stations to the network:

• CC30 Keppel
  Located beneath Keppel Road, the station will serve future residential and commercial developments within the Greater Southern Waterfront precinct.
• CC31 Cantonment
• Built beneath the former Tanjong Pagar Railway Station, Cantonment features a curved ceiling inspired by the railway station’s historic architecture. The station provides access to Spottiswoode Park, Everton Road and Tanjong Pagar Distripark.
• CC32 Prince Edward Road
  Located at the southern edge of the Central Business District, Prince Edward Road station is constructed approximately 30 metres underground to navigate dense surrounding infrastructure.

New “Clockwise & Anticlockwise” Wayfinding

With the Circle Line now operating as a continuous loop, LTA has introduced a revised wayfinding system to help passengers identify the faster direction of travel.

• Trains are identified by Clockwise ↻ and Anticlockwise ↺ instead of terminal stations.
• Passenger information displays indicate the next interchange station.
• Route diagrams grey out stations where travelling in the opposite direction would provide a shorter journey.
• Short-working services continue to display their terminating station, such as Dhoby Ghaut or Prince Edward Road.

The “Clockwise” and “Anticlockwise” terminology was selected following a public consultation, replacing the “Inner Loop” and “Outer Loop” naming convention originally proposed during LTA’s public engagement.

See also:

• CCL Wayfinding | LTA
• CCL6 wayfinding: How did we get the platform maps so wrong? | Land Transport Guru
• A theoretical look at the challenges of wayfinding on the Circle Line | NUS Bus, MRT & Walk Club

Operating Pattern and Frequency

During weekday peak hours, services operate as follows:

• Clockwise ↻ and Anticlockwise ↺ Full Loop
• Dhoby Ghaut to Prince Edward Road via Bishan
  (Clockwise ↻ ends at Dhoby Ghaut; and Anticlockwise ↺ ends at Prince Edward Road)

These operating patterns ensure that trains arrive every 2 minutes along the main loop during peak hours, and every 4 minutes between Dhoby Ghaut ↔ Promenade and Prince Edward Road ↔ Promenade.

During off-peak hours and weekends, services operate as follows:

• Clockwise ↻ and Anticlockwise ↺ Full Loop
• Dhoby Ghaut ↔ Stadium shuttle service

Timetable Observations

CCL First Train Timings as of July 2026. Blue cells represent extrapolated timings.

CCL Last Train Timings as of July 2026. Blue cells represent extrapolated timings.

Uneven commencement of revenue service

Circle Line services commence passenger operations from multiple locations around the loop. This results in adjacent stations having noticeably different first-train departure times as follows:

The largest gap between adjacent stations is seen between Stadium → Mountbatten. The first anticlockwise ↺ train departing Stadium (06:07) originates from Kent Ridge earlier that morning, while fresh trains are dispatched to start service from Mountbatten (05:29). Consequently, Mountbatten receives its first train 38 minutes earlier despite being only one station away.

Likewise, for HarbourFront → Keppel, the first clockwise ↻ train departing Keppel (06:05) originates from Tai Seng earlier that morning, while fresh trains enter service directly at HarbourFront (05:30), resulting in first train timings at HarbourFront being 35 minutes earlier.

On other MRT lines, first-train departure times generally become progressively later with increasing distance from the originating depot or terminus. On the Circle Line, this progression is periodically interrupted as additional trains enter passenger service from intermediate stations, producing sudden “resets” in first-train timings between adjacent stations.

Staggered last train timings

Following the departure of the final full-loop service, additional short-trip services continue operating on selected sections of the line before passenger service concludes for the day.

For the anticlockwise ↺ direction, after the full-loop last train, there are later short-trip terminating services terminating at Tai Seng, Caldecott, one-North, and Pasir Panjang. In the clockwise ↻ direction, these last few terminating trains run to Mountbatten, Bartley, and Marina Bay.

Extended transfer waiting times at Promenade on Weekends

On Weekdays, the first trains from Dhoby Ghaut proceed towards Prince Edward Road via the anticlockwise ↺ loop, allowing passengers a direct trip to most stations without having to transfer.

However, on Weekends, trains on the Dhoby Ghaut spur only operate till Stadium, requiring passengers travelling beyond Stadium to transfer to an anticlockwise ↺ main-loop service.

While the extended transfer wait affects only the first trains of the day, it is notably longer than the published off-peak service interval of approximately 5–6 minutes. Passengers making weekend early morning journeys from the Dhoby Ghaut branch towards stations east of Promenade should therefore account for the longer travel time when planning their journeys.