Night trains disappeared from most of Europe in the late 2000s and early 2010s. Trenitalia killed its long-distance sleepers, SNCF dropped most of its Intercités de Nuit lines, and the industry consensus was that the format had died for good. Then ÖBB bet against the trend, rebranded its sleepers as Nightjet, and the format quietly came back. It has been growing ever since, with fresh routes added on almost every winter timetable.
The working night-train map of Europe is now mostly an ÖBB Nightjet map, supplemented by a handful of state operators and one ambitious startup. The dense corridors fall into a few clear clusters.
Vienna sits at the centre of the network. Nightjet trains run from the Austrian capital to Hamburg, Berlin, Brussels, Amsterdam, Paris, Milan and Rome, which is why the city has reinvented itself as the sleeper hub of the continent. Zurich plays a similar role further west, with overnight services up to Vienna and across to Amsterdam, Hamburg and Berlin.
France and Belgium add their own links. European Sleeper, the startup that joined the field in 2023, connects Brussels and Paris with Vienna, while a small Intercités de Nuit network still operates inside France on routes such as Paris to Nice and Paris to Toulouse.
The Nordic and eastern clusters round out the picture. Snälltåget runs a Stockholm to Berlin service that began as a seasonal experiment and became year-round, plus a EuroNight link onward to Hamburg, and Sweden keeps domestic sleepers running up to Lapland. Further south, RegioJet and Nightjet cover Prague to Zurich, Budapest to Munich (added in late 2024) and a web of services across Czechia, Slovakia and Hungary.
It is just as useful to know where sleepers no longer run. No overnight service crosses the Channel Tunnel, so nothing links London with Paris or Brussels after dark, and no boat-train alternative replaces it. Inside Britain only the Caledonian Sleeper survives, joining London to Scotland. Spain scrapped almost all of its sleeper services in 2020 and has not brought them back.
Booking rewards a little planning. ÖBB Nightjet opens reservations six months ahead, and prices climb steadily as departure approaches. A couchette berth is the cheapest option at roughly €50 off-season, a bed in a shared sleeper costs more, and a private compartment runs from €150 to €300 depending on the route and the season.
One practical note: comfort varies with the age of the carriage. The newest Nightjet stock offers private mini-cabins with their own door, even for solo budget travellers, while older carriages still rely on traditional six-berth couchettes. If sleep quality matters to you, check which rolling stock a given route uses before you book. As a rule, a sleeper pays for itself whenever it saves both a hotel night and a full day of daytime travel, which is usually the case on any journey beyond about 1,000 km.