French rail operator SNCF has opened ticket sales for the Easter holidays and the long ‘pont’ weekends in May.
Ticket sales are now open for the period March 30th to July 3rd – it’s a good idea to try and book train tickets now on SNCF connect, Trainline, or Kombo to find the best prices before the trains fill up, triggering a rapid price increase.
So far the SNCF Connect website has been experiencing a surge in traffic since sales opened at 6am on Wednesday.
“The website and app are seeing twice as many visits than on a typical day,” the rail company’s booking platform told French daily Le Parisien. At 11am on Wednesday, the number of tickets sold was 20 percent higher “compared to the start of sales last year.”
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The month of May has three extended weekends: Friday May 1st is a holiday (May Day) as is Friday May 8th (VE Day).
Meanwhile there is a possible long weekend from Thursday May 14th (Ascension) to Sunday May 17th if you can take Friday May 15th as a day off – picking this option is what French people call faire le pont.
READ ALSO: Faire le pont: The best thing about France’s public holiday system
Easter weekend (which gives you Monday April 6th off), May 1st and May 8th are currently the periods for which train tickets have sold the most. During the previous sales period (up to March 29th 2026), nearly 1.5 million tickets were sold in a single day on SNCF Connect.
Tickets are also available from competitors like Trenitalia (Paris-Lyon-Milan and Paris-Marseille).
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