Nox plans Hamburg-Munich sleeper for March 2027 as night-train economics stay fragile

For travellers, a private operator promises an overnight option. It will have private compartments and a schedule built around business hours. The Paris-Berlin and Basel-Malmo cases show the risk. A night route can disappear quickly when public money does.

A private sleeper bets on Hamburg to Munich

Nox will run its first three-times-weekly Hamburg-Munich night train from 23 March 2027. The service leaves Hamburg at 21.22 and reaches Munich at 8.14.

The return trip leaves Munich at 21.20 and arrives in Hamburg at 8.27. The route will also serve Bremen and Augsburg, according to Railvolution's report from InnoTrans. One-way tickets for the full route start at €65. Nox will launch with five coaches and test the concept on a single route from March, Monocle reported. The corridor it picked is one of Germany's busiest air routes. It had more than 1.2 million air passengers in 2024.

Why night trains are hard to keep running

The Paris-Berlin sleeper had run since 2023 under Austria's ÖBB. The service ended over the winter after France declined to keep covering its losses. European Sleeper, a Belgian-Dutch cooperative, chose to pick it up rather than let it vanish. The train pulled out again on 26 March.

SBB and Germany's RDC had announced a Basel-Malmo sleeper for the same season. It was to run three times a week, sixteen hours end to end, with room for some 350 passengers. It never ran. In December the Swiss parliament voted to withdraw its 10-million-franc share. SBB had to carry the route alone. It judged the route economically unviable and shelved it.

The wider decline is measurable. Night-train services across Europe fell from about 1,200 a week in 2001 to roughly 450 a week in 2019, according to Railvolution.

The business case Nox is selling

Nox targets business travellers on trips of 500km to 1,500km. Thibault Constant, the co-founder and chief marketing officer, argues they would rather catch a 21.00 train and arrive rested for a first meeting than take a plane. He told Monocle: "We want to make overnight trains attractive enough that normal travellers will ditch flights".

The Berlin startup raised €2 million in pre-seed funding. IBB Ventures led the round. It paid for a team of 10 and the first carriage refit. TRI Train Rental will supply the locomotive, drivers and safety staff. Nox is the brand passengers see. Nox Suites have seats that fold out into two-metre beds. They are set to launch next year. Nox Rooms will have 24 closed two-level cabins. They will follow in 2028 at the earliest. Constant's pitch is that a traveller can close the door, finish work, have a glass of wine and sleep for eight hours.

What the incumbents show

ÖBB's Nightjet sleepers carried 1.5 million passengers in 2024. That was part of a record 511 million riders across the Austrian railway. ÖBB launched Nightjet in December 2016. It took over overnight routes and some carriages from Deutsche Bahn as DB walked away from the sleeper business.

ÖBB is the largest night-train operator in Europe, according to Meer. Its network connects Paris, Zurich, Berlin and Vienna. European Sleeper plans an Amsterdam and Brussels to Milan route for launch in 2026.

What happens next

The company aims to serve 100 European cities by 2035. It will start with the DACH region.

"It's hard to give a precise figure regarding the next financing round," Constant told Monocle. He added that the company will gauge investor interest. Starting a new operator in Europe, he said, would be "lengthy, challenging but doable".