On 14 December 2025, the major annual revision of European rail timetables takes place.

Mark Dudgeon, the Blue Guides rail correspondent, looks at some of the more significant changes and new services for the coming year.

AUSTRIA

Without doubt, the most eye-catching development is the opening of the Koralm railway in Austria. This is a new, 127 kilometre-long high-speed line linking the cities of Graz and Klagenfurt. It includes the Koralm tunnel, which – at a length of 33 kilometres – is the longest rail tunnel in Austria, and the fourth-longest in Europe. Until now, these cities were only connected by railway via a highly circuitous route; indeed it was about an hour quicker to travel on a non-stop bus service operated by OeBB (Austrian Railways). This bus service took 2 hours and was operated 8 times daily; Graz to Klagenfurt on the new railway will take just 41 minutes, with nearly 30 daily services each way. 

The opening of the new line will result in the following significant developments:

• The main line from Vienna to Klagenfurt and Villach, and onwards into north-east Italy will now be routed via Graz rather than via Leoben (the traditional route);

• The journey time on the fastest trains from Vienna to Klagenfurt and Villach will be reduced by 45 minutes (Vienna to Klagenfurt will now take 3 hours 10 minutes, for example.) Direct train services between Vienna and Klagenfurt will more than double.

• Railjet services between Vienna and Venice will be retimed, routed via Graz, and journey time will be reduced. The new departure times from Wien Hauptbahnhof will be at 08:53 and 12:53, with arrival at Venezia Santa Lucia at 16:09 and 20:03 respectively. In the reverse direction, journey time is also reduced by about 30 minutes: while the 09:56 departure time from Venezia Santa Lucia remains unchanged, unfortunately the later departure is put back by one hour to 16:52, with arrival at Wien Hauptbahnhof just after midnight – far too late for any onward connections.

• A new Railjet service will operate between Vienna and Trieste, leaving Wien Hauptbahnhof at 06:53 and returning from Trieste Centrale at 14:22, with a journey time of about 6 hours 40 minutes in each direction.

• There will now be two trains an hour between Vienna and Graz during the daytime, instead of the previously hourly frequency. The services will be operated by a mixture of Railjets and EuroCity/InterCity trains.

OeBB has indicated that, overall, long-distance services in Austria will increase by 30% in the new timetable. Some of the additional changes on other routes include:

• The daytime frequency of services between Salzburg and Villach via the Tauern tunnel will increase from once every two hours to hourly. Trains on this route will comprise Railjets, InterCity Express (ICE) trains to and from Germany and a few EuroCity/InterCity trains.

• A new Interregio (IR) service will operate hourly or every two hours on the following routes:
  • Graz – Innsbruck via Leoben and Schwarzach-St Veit
  • Graz – Klagenfurt via Bruck an der Mur and Leoben: the original route
  • Graz – Linz
  • Graz – Maribor in Slovenia
  • Salzburg – Wörgl via Schwarzach St Veit, Zell am See and Kitzbühel

A welcome development is that whereas previously these routes were served mainly by second-class-only local and regional trains, the new IR services will include trains with a first-class section and a catering zone or trolley service.

• The international EC Transalpin train, between Graz and Zurich, will continue to use the traditional route via Selzthal and Schwarzach St Veit; however Graz to Salzburg long-distance trains will use the longer route via the Koralm railway and Villach. This leads to a couple of timetabling quirks:
• Passengers travelling mid-morning between Graz and Bischofshofen could leave either at 09:49 northbound from Graz on the EC Transalpin to Zurich,  or southbound from Graz on the 10:00 ICE service to Frankfurt, travelling on completely different routes, but with almost identical journey times of just over 3 hours; the trains arriving at Bischofshofen in opposite directions within 9 minutes of each other.
• Two of the Railjet services from Vienna to Graz and Klagenfurt will continue on to Salzburg and Munich. The journey time on these trains from Vienna to Munich via Graz and the Tauern tunnel, at over 8 hours, will be double the time taken on the direct Railjet services via Linz.

Central Europe: new and enhanced international services

The new timetable provides for several new, or increased-frequency, international services. Highlights include:

• Zagreb will again be served by EuroCity trains from Munich and Vienna, although the Munich – Zagreb service will operate only in the southbound direction at first. The northbound service will require a change at Villach until early summer 2026, when the direct train is expected to resume.

• An additional EuroCity train will operate in each direction between Berlin and Warsaw, which means a total of seven trains each way, and a regular two-hourly frequency.

• Krakow will be served by an additional EuroCity train from Vienna (making a total of 3 daytime trains in each direction, plus an overnight sleeper), and two EuroCity trains to and from Leipzig, with a journey time of about 7 hours 15 minutes.

• An additional Railjet will serve Vienna and Prague, with an earlier morning departure from  Wien Hauptbahnhof at 05:28, and from Prague a later 19:36 departure. In Prague, this latter service will serve the station of Holesovice rather than the main station, its journey having originated in Berlin.

• Several trains between Budapest and Prague including the Budapest – Prague – Berlin  Hungaria service (which also operates to Hamburg in the northbound direction), will be operated by new Czech ComfortJet trains. ComfortJet trains are based on the Railjet design, with some new features and the flexibility of different train lengths, unlike the fixed-unit Railjet sets.

• Four new EuroCity services will operate each way between Vienna and the main station in Bratislava, complementing the current hourly regional service. These services, together with the existing Budapest – Vienna EuroCity services, will be extended beyond Wien Hauptbahnhof to and from Wien Westbahnhof, providing a regular train service between the Austrian capital’s two principal stations. However, the meandering railway route, around the city’s western suburbs, means a scheduled journey time between these stations of about 30 minutes – twice that of the number 18 tram operating between the same points.

• The existing Zurich – Bologna EC service will be extended to and from Florence. Departure from Zurich HB is at 14:30 while in the other direction, departure from Firenze SMN station is at 07:45, conveniently allowing for connections between Zurich and France and Germany.

Germany

In recent years Deutsche Bahn has been plagued by well-reported unreliability problems leading to frequent significant delays and cancellations.

In this context, DB’s unveiling of more half-hourly frequency ICE services on core routes may be seen by some as overly optimistic. Existing routes with half-hourly frequency include Frankfurt to Cologne and Nuremberg to Munich. The new routes are:

• Hamburg – Kassel – Mannheim – Stuttgart
• Berlin – Nuremberg

DB is attempting to address reliability concerns by simplifying operations – lightly-used ICE services, and those to outlying destinations, will be reduced. Additionally, the new timetable will include more standardisation of arrival and departure times, and train types.

On-going engineering works to upgrade ageing infrastructure will continue: for example, major work on the Nuremberg to Passau line in 2026, which is used by key ICE services between Vienna and Frankfurt, will result in diversions and temporary withdrawal of services. From mid-June to mid-December 2026, no Vienna Frankfurt ICEs will operate; to compensate, there will be additional trains between Vienna and Munich, several of which will, unusually for this route, be operated by ICE trainsets.

Several international services to and from Germany will see increases in frequency. In addition to those mentioned earlier in this article, these include:

• Hamburg – Prague
• Frankfurt – Brussels
• Munich to Klagenfurt and Graz

ICE services between Germany and Switzerland will be enhanced, with new through services including Cologne – Zurich – Chur and Berlin – Zurich – Brig.

The flagship Paris – Berlin ICE service will be retimed in both directions. From Paris Est, departure will be at 11:07 (previously 09:55), and from Berlin Hauptbahnhof departure will be nearly five hours earlier at 07:06. Despite the revised schedule including an additional three stops in each direction, and requiring reversal at Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof, journey time will be reduced by a few minutes to just under eight hours.

Great Britain

• LNER, which operates services along the East Coast Main Line between London, north-east England and Edinburgh is introducing major changes. Journey times between London and Edinburgh will be accelerated, with an hourly fast service which will call at York and Newcastle only. Journey time on these London to Edinburgh trains will be roughly 4 hours 10 minutes.

• Eurostar will introduce an additional daily service between London and Amsterdam, resulting in a total of five trains in each direction.

Night services

The optimism over expanded night train services during the past few years has tempered somewhat recently, and the new timetable reflects the status of consolidation rather than expansion.

The problems of running night services are many:

• Expensive rolling-stock only produces revenue for one service per day, and with a much lower passenger capacity than daytime trains;
• Cross-border services are difficult to run because of many operating and regulatory obstacles;
• Freight trains tend to be given priority over passenger trains during night time, and engineering work often takes place at night, so delays are frequent; 
• Political backing can be transient, especially when involving providing subsidies.

As a result, operating night trains can be very expensive, and despite the increasing desire for passengers to seek more environmentally-friendly ways to travel, there is a limit to the price they will pay for this. Furthermore, much of the rolling-stock used (with the exception of the new generation Nightjet trains) is decades old.

The most significant changes are as follows:

• The Nightjet services between Paris and Berlin and Paris and Vienna will be withdrawn from the start of the new timetable. Although these trains were popular, the withdrawal of French government subsidies will apparently make them uneconomical to run. However, in a further development, European Sleeper has announced that it will launch a Paris – Berlin sleeper service from 26th March 2026. This new service will operate, via Brussels, three times a week in each direction. It remains to be seen if European Sleeper can make the service financially viable.

• Currently, the Vienna – Lviv – Kyiv  and Vienna – Bucharest sleepers are formed of coaches attached to two separate Vienna – Budapest EuroCity trains. From December, the Vienna – Bucharest and Vienna – Kyiv services will operate as a separate train, starting from Wien Westbahnhof and departing Wien Hauptbahnhof at 19:08. This train will avoid the time-consuming reversal at Budapest Keleti, and the two portions will separate at Szolnok in Hungary. The Vienna to Bucharest journey time will be reduced by about 75 minutes.

• Nightjet will no longer offer services to and from the Italian port of La Spezia on the Ligurian coast, because of various engineering works planned in Italy.

• New generation Nightjet trains are planned to start operating on the Zurich – Hamburg service from 4^th December 2025. Furthermore, in spring 2026, it is planned to gradually introduce the new trains on the Zurich to Amsterdam, Vienna and Berlin services.

• From April 2026, it is expected that a Basel – Copenhagen (continuing on to Malmö) Euronight service will be operated three times per week. This would be effectively the reintroduction of a service which used to be operated by Deutsche Bahn under the City Night Line brand until a decade ago.

• At the end of July 2026, the Swedish government will withdraw its subsidy for the popular Stockholm – Hamburg – Berlin night train. Consequently Swedish Railways (SJ) will no longer be involved with this service. However, RDC Deutschland, the company which currently operates the train on behalf of SJ, has said that it will take over the service: operating frequency remains to be confirmed.

Later in 2026

• May 2026 will see the introduction of a direct Prague to Copenhagen service, via Berlin. Czech ComfortJet trains will operate two services in each direction.
• From September 2026, DB will introduce a direct Cologne – Brussels – Antwerp service, with two trains daily in each direction.
• Reports say that a direct Budapest – Belgrade EuroCity service will be introduced, operating on a two-hourly frequency with some trains extended to and from Vienna, but the start date is yet to be confirmed.

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And finally, the citizens of England’s second city, Birmingham, will not have to wait much longer for the restoration of a suburban train service after 85 years. Services on the Camp Hill line, between central Birmingham and its leafy southern suburb of Kings Norton (where it connects to existing services), were withdrawn as a cost-saving measure in the Second World War, thus even pre-dating the infamous Beeching cuts by a quarter of a century. The exact starting date for the restored service, and the opening of three stations, is yet to be confirmed but is expected during spring 2026.