Europe's night trains: what the guides say about routes, berths and booking

Night trains are scheduled overnight rail services with beds, couchettes or reclining seats. You board in the evening, sleep, and wake up in a new city. The Guardian's slow travel column reported on 14 December 2023 that the 2024 European timetables, introduced on 10 December that year, added direct overnight links between Warsaw and Munich, Berlin and Paris, and Aachen and Salzburg. At the time, none of those three city pairs had a direct daytime train, the paper said.

The numbers behind the revival

Most guides agree on the scale of the comeback. The travel desk artofthetravel.com, which says it does not sell berths, puts the network at more than 60 night train routes in Europe by 2026, roughly double the number in 2020, citing Back-on-Track. The same page, citing the European Parliamentary Research Service from 2021, says the network fell from roughly 200 European routes in the 1990s to fewer than 30 by 2019. That page also flags its own limits. It says it did not run a private sleeper-inventory lab and did not book mystery couchettes as a field test. It describes its fare bands as research ranges drawn from published ÖBB, Eurail, Back-on-Track and European Environment Agency pages, not live quotes. Readers should treat the euro figures below the same way: they are indicative, not checkout prices.

ÖBB, Austria's state operator, is the company most often credited with the rebuild. According to artofthetravel.com, ÖBB acquired the former Deutsche Bahn Nightjet brand in 2016 and added over 20 new route segments between 2021 and 2025, expanding from central Europe into Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Berlin. The same source, citing an ÖBB press release from 2024, says Nightjet carried 1.8 million passengers in 2023, up 40% on 2019 levels. Both claims, the route count and the passenger figure, come from a single secondary source and have not been independently verified here.

The environmental argument runs through the sources. The artofthetravel.com desk says a Vienna to Paris sleeper emits roughly 90% less CO2 than the equivalent flight, citing the European Environment Agency in 2023. Separately, the Guardian reported on 27 February 2024 that Rail Delivery Group analysis found train travel on Britain's busiest business routes generates less than half the carbon emissions of a battery electric car. On average across the top 100 business travel routes, the analysis found, a diesel or petrol car produced nine times more carbon than going by train.

Who runs what, and where

The operator list is longer than most travellers assume. EveryRail's guide names ÖBB Nightjet, which connects Vienna to Paris, Amsterdam and Rome; European Sleeper, running Brussels to Berlin and Prague; Swedish SJ night trains, which reach Narvik above the Arctic Circle; and Finland's Santa Claus Express from Helsinki to Rovaniemi. Interrail's own night train pages add Intercités de Nuit in France, Italy's InterCity Notte, the Sofia to Istanbul Express, the Bosphorus Express from Bucharest to Istanbul, the Night Riviera sleeper from London to Cornwall, Caledonian Sleeper from London to Scotland, Snälltåget in Sweden and EuroNight services. EveryRail notes that European Sleeper was working to expand from one route to three routes in six months.

The new Euronight direct sleeper linking Salzburg with Kraków, for example, creates a real opportunity for culture vultures to combine [trips to] two very different cities.

That quote comes from Cat Jones, chief executive of the flight-free operator Byway Travel, speaking to the Guardian in December 2023. The Guardian reported that the Salzburg to Kraków link takes almost 10 hours, and that the Warsaw-bound train leaving Munich on the evening of 10 December 2023 was the first direct departure from Bavaria to Poland since 2010. Not every change in that timetable round was an addition. The Guardian noted that Aarhus lost its twice-daily direct trains to Hamburg, compensated by a connecting service every two hours with a same-platform change at Kolding. Nuremberg went from five direct trains a day to the Czech Republic to none. In France, where the paper recalled Le Monde proclaiming in 2016 that the night train was finished, new overnight links were added from Béziers and Montpellier to Paris and from Aurillac to Paris, with fares from €19 for seats and €29 for couchettes and no sleeping cars at all.

Seat, couchette or sleeper

EveryRail breaks the accommodation into three tiers. Seated carriages have reclining seats and typically start from about €39 on many routes. Couchettes offer 4 to 6 bunks in a shared compartment with sheets, blankets and a pillow, and EveryRail puts the price at around €59 to €79 per berth. Sleeper compartments have 1 to 3 berths, real mattresses, fresh linens and often a washbasin, with premium services adding a private bathroom and shower; EveryRail gives a range of €89 to €150 or more, depending on route and how early you book. Its summary of the difference is blunt: sleepers are hotel-like, couchettes are hostel-like.

The artofthetravel.com desk gives different numbers for a Nightjet couchette on a medium-distance hop, a research range of around €49 to €99, and suggests booking when a 180-day research snapshot opens. It also sets out three cases for skipping the train entirely: when a daytime hop is under about four hours, when you would take a seat on a route of 10 hours or more, and when an aggregator hides a berth that the operator's own site still shows. Operator detail varies by country. According to EveryRail, ÖBB Nightjet runs seated coaches, 4- and 6-berth couchettes and sleeper cabins with single, double or triple occupancy. Italian InterCity Notte runs "Comfort" sleepers and 4- to 6-berth couchettes on routes such as Rome to Sicily and Milan to Naples. Swedish SJ night trains have sleeper cabins with private facilities in first class plus 6-berth couchette carriages. EveryRail notes that most services default to mixed-gender couchettes, though women-only couchettes are available on some trains.

Some of the network's appeal is not about comfort at all. Rail-away.com, which publishes first-person journey accounts, lists the EuroNight Kálmán Imre sleeper from Budapest to Stuttgart and Zurich, Norway's Vy overnight service from Oslo to Bergen with its PlusNight option, an ÖBB Nightjet New Generation service from Vienna to Hamburg using Siemens-built stock and a Mini-Cabin product, the Milan and Rome to Sicily route that crosses the Strait of Messina by train ferry, and a Retro Istria Express from Budapest to Koper using 1960s-era carriages. It also describes a Nightjet service from Zürich to Amsterdam using a sleeping car from 1975 designated AB33, and calls a Bucharest to Cluj Napoca carriage from 1965 Europe's oldest sleeper train. Those are anecdotal reports from a site that sells nothing on the page, but they show how uneven the fleet is.

Booking and pass rules

Reservations are compulsory on night trains, and Interrail is explicit that this applies even to holders of a first class pass. A pass does not include the berth. Interrail's guidance says reservations can be made online, by phone or at the station, and that the reservation fee rises with the level of accommodation. Pass logistics catch people out. Interrail says that if you travel on a night train from 9 to 10 August, a paper pass only needs the departure date, 9 August, written down, while a mobile pass records it automatically. On the departure day you can take as many trains as you like before the night train, all counted as the same travel day. The departure day of a night train cannot be the last day of a pass's validity.

For residents of the 33 countries in the pass network, an inbound night train home needs two travel days, split at the border station outside your country of residence, added as two separate journeys in the mobile app. Interrail's own example is an Austrian traveller leaving Amsterdam for Amstetten. Its guidance also carries a practical note: it is common practice to hand over your paper pass and passport to train staff, and you get them back in the morning.

The artofthetravel.com desk frames the whole decision as a comparison rather than a romance. Its advice is to name the operator for the corridor, name the berth rather than the train, and count the hotel night you are not buying, comparing flight plus city-centre hotel against the sleeper fare rather than the bare airfare. It also warns against putting children in a shared 6-berth couchette, recommending booking the whole compartment instead.

None of the sources cited here provide a live fare or timetable, so any specific price should be checked against the operator before booking. What the sources do agree on is the direction of travel: more routes, newer stock on some corridors and older carriages on others, and a reservation system that rewards booking early.