Enough time to transfer between trains in Europe? Your ticket matters more than the minutes

What a minimum connection time covers

Read the planner’s minimum as a walking allowance for that station, not as a reserve for delay. Do not count on the second train waiting: National Rail says connections “cannot be guaranteed, as waiting for a late-running service can cause knock-on effects across the network.” A short change at a big station is time for stairs, crowds and the far end of a platform, with nothing left over if the first train is late.

Ticket sellers publish rules of thumb for the walk itself. Interrail recommends “at least 20 minutes for transfers, and more if you have heavy luggage, children, or are in a large group,” while noting that its own planner shows options with transfer times of five minutes or less; it also suggests checking the railway company’s website for your connecting train’s departure platform. Rail Europe recommends at least 10 to 15 minutes for platform-to-platform transfers at Munich, Berlin, Frankfurt and Cologne Hbf, and says a 5–7 minute transfer offered by a carrier means the platform change is “officially recognized as feasible.” Its Munich example puts the walk from most long-distance platforms to the S-Bahn entrance at 3 to 6 minutes. Those figures are about walking. None of them covers a late first train, which is where the ticket comes in.

You can ask a planner for more. National Rail’s journey planner lets you allow extra time to change trains under Journey options, and Deutsche Bahn’s DB Navigator lets you pick “the desired number of minutes under ‘Transfer time’” before it searches. Trainline suggests a different departure time, or booking each leg separately to create a longer connection. The planner settings and an earlier departure keep the journey on one booking. Splitting it into separately booked legs can leave you holding several contracts instead of one: the EU rule that turns tickets into a through-ticket covers those bought “in a single commercial transaction from a railway undertaking,” and Trainline’s help page on combined journeys says that because it puts separate tickets together, “you have separate transport contracts for each of the tickets.”

How often the first train is late enough to matter

Deutsche Bahn publishes the clearest numbers for this. It counts a stop as punctual when the train arrives less than six minutes after the scheduled time, so a train running five minutes and 59 seconds late is on time in its statistics. By that measure, DB’s long-distance trains, its ICE and IC/EC services, reached 52.4 percent of their stops on time in September 2026. The other 47.6 percent were six minutes or more late. The September figures do not break that share down further, but a delay of that size is enough to break a five-minute change if the second train leaves on time.

Longer delays are not rare either. DB’s interim report says that in the first half of 2026, “in 76 percent of cases, long-distance trains arrived with a delay of less than 15 minutes,” which leaves 24 percent at 15 minutes or more. DB also measures passengers rather than trains: whether they reach the destination on their ticket less than 15 minutes late, with a threshold of 14:59, taking account of connections made and missed, cancellations, replacement trains, timetable changes and alternative connections. For long-distance travel that passenger figure was 63.2 percent in the first half of 2026, so 36.8 percent of passengers arrived 15 minutes or more behind plan. September’s figure is 58.7 percent in DB’s monthly table, although the summary text on the same page gives 58.6.

Regional trains are another story. DB Regio reached 88.2 percent of its stops on time in September by the same six-minute rule, so 11.8 percent were six minutes or more late. A change between two regional trains is a smaller gamble than a change off an ICE, and none of these German figures describes trains in France, Italy or Britain.

My reading: in Germany, a change off a long-distance train that is shorter than 15 minutes should be planned as one that may fail. On one ticket, with another train along soon, that is usually an acceptable risk. On separate tickets, or for the last train of the evening, I would not take it.

What a missed change costs on each kind of booking

The ticket decides who has to get you onward and who pays if they cannot. This comparison uses the rule texts as they stood when checked in October 2026; the EU rows come from Regulation (EU) 2021/782, the rail passenger rights law.

The EU rows come with numbers worth knowing. Once your arrival at the final destination is expected to be 60 minutes or more late, the railway must offer you a choice of a refund, rerouting at the earliest opportunity, or rerouting later at your convenience. If it has not told you the rerouting options within 100 minutes of the scheduled departure of the missed connection, you may book other rail, coach or bus services yourself and claim back the “necessary, appropriate and reasonable costs.” Compensation is a separate right if you have not taken that refund: at least 25 percent of the ticket price for a delay of 60 to 119 minutes and 50 percent from 120 minutes, unless the railway can prove the delay came from causes such as extreme weather or people on the track. EU countries may exempt urban, suburban and regional services from the regulation, although some articles stay in force, so a change between local trains is not always covered the same way.

The booking screen is supposed to tell you which row you are in. For journeys with connections, the regulation requires that you are told before you buy whether the ticket or tickets form a through-ticket. Trainline, for example, says it flags a combined journey before you book and again in the confirmation email. If a seller put separate tickets together in one purchase on its own initiative and did not tell you, the full refund plus 75 percent compensation in the fourth row is the remedy the law sets.

Rail passes add a catch of their own. Interrail says that if you miss a reserved connection, you must book a new reservation for the next train, “as reservations are specific to each service,” or choose a train that does not require one.

Separate tickets across a border: the AJC

For international trips on separate tickets, a group of European railways runs the Agreement on Journey Continuation, or AJC. If a delayed or cancelled train makes you miss a connection, you can take the next available train of the company whose train you missed, at no extra cost. The members listed in the leaflet dated 1 August 2026 include DB, SNCF, Trenitalia, Renfe, ÖBB, SBB, NS, SNCB/NMBS, CD, PKP IC and Eurostar; Italo, RegioJet and Flixtrain are not on that list. DB’s passenger-rights page is blunt about its status: it is “a documented goodwill arrangement. There is no legal entitlement.”

The conditions matter as much as the list. The journey as a whole must be international, although it may include domestic tickets, and the tickets may have been bought “in one or more separate commercial transactions.” DB’s page on the scheme adds a condition the leaflet does not state: right after requiring each ticket to be a separate contract of carriage, it says “This does not apply to tickets deliberately purchased in separate booking processes,” and its one example of a combination “not covered by the AJC” is a national season ticket such as the Deutschland-Ticket plus an international ticket. That wording is hard to square with the leaflet, so if your plan joins a season ticket to an international fare, do not rely on the AJC. You can continue only with the company whose service you missed and for which you hold a ticket, not with a rival running to the same city. A seat on the later train is not guaranteed, and the AJC pays for no hotel, taxi or compensation, and provides no meals. Ask the late train’s railway for a delay or cancellation confirmation and show it with the ticket for the train you missed; some railways issue a new ticket or reservation instead.

One clause answers the question of how much time is enough. You must have planned a “reasonable connecting time,” and the leaflet explains what that means: “you should take the official railway journey planners as a guide and ideally allow a few minutes extra time on top.” DB’s own worked example has a traveler with a DB-issued EC ticket from Berlin to Prague and a separate CD regional ticket from Prague to Pilsen. The Berlin train runs late, the Pilsen train leaves without them, and the staff in Prague “check that you had allowed enough time for your connection” before pointing them to the next CD train, which they can use at no extra cost. Snälltåget, one of the Swedish members, names a figure for AJC connections: it recommends “a minimum transfer time of 45 minutes” in, for example, Copenhagen, Hamburg or Berlin.

Two gaps remain. A domestic trip on separate tickets gets nothing from the AJC, because the journey has to be international. And since staff judge whether your time was reasonable, a gap that only matches the planner’s minimum leaves you short of the leaflet’s own advice. For an international change on separate tickets, my rule would be the planner’s minimum plus those few extra minutes, then a check that the next train of the same company still gets you somewhere useful that day.

When the minimum is enough, and when I would add time

Here is a worked example, with times I have assumed. A one-ticket Deutsche Bahn Sparpreis journey has an 8-minute change, and the first train arrives 14 minutes late. You miss the connection, so DB cancels the train restriction: your ticket is valid on a later connection of your choice, on DB long-distance and local trains, by any route to the destination on the ticket. What you lose is time and any seat you reserved on the missed train, and DB refunds that reservation fee when a delay stopped you using it. Put the same 14 minutes against two separate domestic tickets from different companies and the picture changes. There is no through-ticket and no AJC, and if the second ticket is tied to one train, you may have to buy another.

I would accept the planner’s minimum without much worry when the trip is on one through ticket, the next suitable train is not long after, and no reservation-only train or timed booking hangs on the connection. I would add time, or pick an earlier first train, for separate tickets, especially on a domestic trip; for a change off a German long-distance train, given DB’s 2026 figures; for any change between two stations, which our guide to different-station transfers budgets step by step; and for the last connection of the day, where a miss can mean a taxi or a hotel rather than a later train, as our late-night return guide shows for city transport in six cities. To put numbers on one specific change, our connection buffer check takes the platform walk and the margin you want away from the scheduled gap and shows how many minutes are spare.

If it does go wrong, get a delay confirmation from the train crew or station staff; the AJC process starts with it, and it backs up any later claim. Then find staff at the station where you should have boarded the missed train, rather than jumping on whatever leaves next, since AJC travel is limited to the same company. Note the scheduled departure time of the train you missed as well: under EU rules, the 100-minute clock for rerouting starts there.