SNCF ticket sales opening for summer
Date and times of train ticket sales opening
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When to book your train tickets for summer?
Summer concentrates the highest demand of the year on routes to the coast and mountains. It is also the period when the price difference between booking at opening and purchasing three weeks before departure is most dramatic: it often exceeds double on a Paris - Côte d'Azur route on a Saturday in July.
The rule is simple: summer sales open on a single date, announced in spring, and cover the entire season all at once. The exact date, carrier by carrier, appears in the calendar higher up on this page.
Sales not yet open for your dates?
No need to wait doing nothing: on Tictactrip, bus and carpooling routes are already bookable for those same dates, even when SNCF has not yet opened sales. You can therefore secure a route right away, then compare with the train on opening day.
The most popular routes in summer:
- Paris - Marseille
- Paris - Nice
- Paris - Montpellier
- Paris - Bordeaux
- Paris - Biarritz
- Paris - La Rochelle
- Paris - Perpignan
- Paris - Toulon
- Paris - Saint-Malo
- Paris - Avignon
- Paris - Hendaye
- Lyon - Nice
Three ways to pay less this summer
Book at opening
The lowest prices sell out in the first few hours on tight routes. Prepare your dates and stations the day before so you don't waste time on opening day.
Use a discount card
The SNCF Advantage cards give -30% off ticket prices and are applied directly in Tictactrip search results.
Accept a combination
A train to an intermediate station then a bus to the final destination regularly costs half as much as a direct trip at peak season, for an extra hour of travel. This is the type of itinerary our engine builds automatically.
Other SNCF sales openings
For the complete calendar, all seasons and all carriers combined, check the SNCF sales opening page. For end-of-year holidays and ski vacations, visit SNCF Christmas and winter sales opening.
FAQ for SNCF Summer Sales Opening
🎟 How to find cheap train tickets this summer?
Whatever the destination of your next trip this summer 2023, and whichever SNCF transport company you're using, you can easily find cheap train tickets!
Book in advance
To pay less, you can book your tickets in advance. On average, SNCF tickets are available for purchase 3 months before the departure date. As you saw above, for some companies, tickets are even available earlier!
And booking in advance means much cheaper tickets!
Use a discount card
And to stack this ticket price discount, you always have the option of using your SNCF discount card: the Avantage SNCF card gives you a 30% discount on ticket prices.
🗓 What are the dates of the other SNCF 2023 sales openings?
Would you like to know more about all the SNCF sales opening dates that take place throughout the year and for each season?
Spring sales opening
The spring 2023 sales opened on 25 January 2023. From that point on, all SNCF tickets are available for purchase.
Winter sales opening
As for the SNCF winter 2023 sales opening, it takes place every year in November. This way, you can book your tickets for the following year's ski season!
As you will have understood, it's important to distinguish between the opening of SNCF ticket sales for the Christmas holidays and that for winter.
SNCF summer sales opening: TGV INOUI, INTERCITÉS and OUIGO tickets
Summer is the period when the price difference between an advance booking and a last-minute purchase is at its widest for the entire year. It's also when SNCF releases the largest volume of tickets all at once.
As with Christmas and winter, summer does not follow the four-month rule: tickets go on sale on a single date, usually in spring, and cover the entire summer season until the service change in December.
Exact dates by carrier are shown in the calendar above on this page. They are sourced from the sales rules of our booking engine, not from manual input: they do not expire.
Note for journeys to Spain, Italy, Switzerland or Germany: partner companies open their sales according to their own schedules, often offset by a few weeks compared to SNCF. Comparing the two saves you from waiting for nothing.
