France’s national rail operator SNCF Voyageurs has been told by the French Transport Ministry that state funding for the Vienna–Paris and Berlin–Paris night trains will end in January 2026.
The subsidy for operating the Paris-Vienna and Paris-Berlin night train services reportedly was around €5-10 million/year. By withdrawing its financial support, the heavily indebted French government signed the death warrant for both night train lines.
Because these overnight services depend on international partners, Austria’s federal rail company ÖBB says that, after the French withdrawal, both routes will be discontinued on December 14, 2025. However, ÖBB will maintain its Vienna–Brussels Nightjet three times a week next year. The Austrian rail company remains Europe’s largest night-train operator. It continues to run routes such as Vienna–Amsterdam and Munich–Rome and adding 24 next-generation Nightjets to increase capacity and comfort.
The decision underscores the fragility of the SNCF–ÖBB partnership, launched with Deutsche Bahn and Swiss Federal Railways in 2020 to expand cross-border Nightjet services. SNCF operated the French segments while ÖBB provided the rolling stock—a rarity in Europe. But both the Paris-Berlin and Paris-Vienna routes have consistently lost money.
According to reporting by French newspaper Le Monde, neither route could overcome low profitability or the government’s budget cuts. Night trains are costly to run. A train-set makes effectively only one round trip per 24 hours. It also offers fewer seats than a TGV, while operating expenses remain high.
When celebrating with much fanfare the launch of Paris-Vienna in late 2021 and then Paris-Berlin in 2023 – considered by then as green-travel showcases, none of the train companies could then forecast that the sleeper adventure would reach the end of the line so early…
