Glacier Express

The Glacier Express bills itself as the slowest express train in the world — and it wears the title with pride. Over roughly eight unhurried hours it links two of the Alps' most famous mountain resorts, Zermatt, at the foot of the Matterhorn, and St. Moritz, in the Engadine — and the whole point is that you should never want it to go faster.

This is not a train you take to get somewhere quickly. It is a train you take because the journey is the destination: a slow, panoramic drift through the heart of the Swiss Alps, past glaciers, deep gorges, high passes and storybook villages, all seen through the great curved windows of its panoramic coaches.

The route runs for 291 kilometres between Zermatt and St. Moritz, crossing 291 bridges and threading 91 tunnels on its way — a reminder that this is as much a feat of mountain engineering as it is a scenic ride.

Leaving Zermatt, the train descends the Matter valley to Brig before beginning the long climb through the Goms valley toward the Oberalp Pass, the highest point of the line at 2,033 metres. This first half is worked by the Matterhorn Gotthard Bahn, including rack-and-pinion sections where the gradient is too steep for adhesion alone.

From the pass the line drops toward Andermatt and the Urseren valley, then joins the metre-gauge network of the Rhaetische Bahn for the eastern half of the journey. The scenery now becomes almost theatrical:

• The Rhine Gorge (Ruinaulta), a chalk-white canyon carved by the young Rhine and often called the "Swiss Grand Canyon."
• The Landwasser Viaduct, a curved six-arch bridge that sweeps out of a rock face straight into a tunnel — the single most photographed structure on the whole route.
• The Albula line (Thusis–St. Moritz), part of the UNESCO World Heritage "Rhaetian Railway in the Albula / Bernina Landscapes" — a stretch of spiral tunnels and viaducts that gains height in a series of loops through the mountainside.

By the time the train climbs into the Engadine and rolls into St. Moritz, you have crossed the spine of the Alps in a single sitting — slowly, deliberately, and with a window seat the entire way.

Through the summer season the Glacier Express runs four trains a day in each direction, and the whole point is that it takes its time — a little under eight hours for the 291 km, filling a full day. A seat reservation is compulsory on top of your ticket or rail pass.

Not all four run the full length of the line. Two of them start or finish part-way along it, at Chur or Brig, which matters if you are only travelling over part of the route — and gives Chur an afternoon departure the flagship trains do not. Times below are the operator's summer 2026 timetable, 2 May – 10 October 2026.

Zermatt → St. Moritz

St. Moritz → Zermatt

Intermediate figures are departure times. PE 900 terminates at Chur and PE 901 at Brig, so neither is a through run; PE 906 begins at Brig and PE 907 at Chur. Several trains also call at Thusis, Tiefencastel, Filisur, Bergün, Samedan and Celerina — the 07:05 from St. Moritz stops at most of them on its way down the Albula valley, at some only to set down or pick up.

Excellence Class runs on PE 902 and PE 903 only — the premium coach with the guaranteed window seat and the five-course menu. The other six trains carry 1st and 2nd class.

In winter, and when the line shuts

Winter is thinner: two trains each way. Over the 2025/26 season — 6 December to 1 May — Zermatt sent trains at 07:52 and 08:52, reaching St. Moritz at 15:37 and 16:37; St. Moritz sent them at 08:38 and 09:38, reaching Zermatt at 17:07 and 18:07. The 07:52 and the 09:38 ran only over the peak weeks, from mid-December to early January and again from the end of January. The 2026/27 winter times were not yet published when this page was last checked; the operator opens reservations for December onwards in mid-October.

Between the two seasons the railway closes altogether. There is no Glacier Express between 11 October and 4 December 2026.

Worth knowing before you book

• The reservation is separate from the ticket, and from any rail pass. Seats in 1st and 2nd class go on sale 93 days before the date of travel; Excellence Class can be booked for the whole timetable period. Summer departures and the Christmas weeks sell out well ahead.
• Davos is a change, not a through coach. Trains marked for Davos connect there at Filisur — no portion is worked through.
• Dogs and other animals are not carried on the Glacier Express.

Times as of the summer 2026 timetable, read from the operator in August 2026 — glacierexpress.ch (opens in a new tab). They change with each season, so it is worth a look before you travel.

A Glacier Express fare has two parts: the rail ticket for the route and a compulsory seat reservation in a panoramic coach. Rail passes such as the Swiss Travel Pass and Eurail/Interrail are widely accepted for the journey itself, but you still need to pay and book the reservation separately, and popular summer departures sell out well ahead.

If you want the full experience, Excellence Class adds a guaranteed window seat, a five-course menu served at your table and a welcome glass of Champagne. The options below show the full Zermatt–St. Moritz route by class, with the ticket and its compulsory reservation combined into one indicative price. Fares checked July 2026 against the operator's price page (opens in a new tab).

A pass covers the ticket for the Glacier Express but never the reservation, and on this train the reservation is the expensive half of the deal. That one fact decides whether a pass is worth buying for the journey.

What the operator accepts

Glacier Express AG lists the travel cards it takes, and the list is generous: the Swiss Travel Pass and Swiss Travel Pass Flex, Eurail and Interrail passes, the Half Fare Travelcard, the GA travelcard, the Saver Day Pass, the Swiss Transfer Ticket, the Swiss Half Fare Card, the Junior Travelcard and the Swiss Family Card. Children under 6 travel free; those from 6 to 16 pay half.

Against all of that sits a single sentence from the operator: the seat reservation is obligatory for every passenger and is not covered by any travel card.

The arithmetic

The full 2nd-class fare from Zermatt to St. Moritz is CHF 159, and the reservation CHF 54 — CHF 213 in total. A pass removes the CHF 159 and leaves the CHF 54. So the Glacier Express is worth roughly CHF 159 of value on the day you ride it, which is a substantial part of what a three-day Swiss Travel Pass costs but not the whole of it. As one day inside a longer trip, that is excellent value. As the reason for buying a pass on its own, it does not quite get there.

There is a catch that pass holders in particular run into. The reservation is CHF 54 whether you ride the whole line or one section of it. The operator's own fare table prices Chur–Andermatt at CHF 53 in 2nd class — so a pass holder taking that shorter leg pays more for the reservation than the ticket would have cost outright. The Glacier Express repays a full day; it is poor value as a two-hour hop on a pass.

For Excellence Class the reservation is CHF 540 and requires a 1st-class ticket underneath it. A pass covers that underlying ticket, which makes the pass a meaningful saving in relative terms and a rounding error in absolute ones.

Which pass, in practice

The Swiss Travel Pass is the natural fit for a visitor: 3, 4, 6, 8 or 15 consecutive days, or the same number of freely chosen days within a month on the Flex version, covering trains, buses and boats across the country, public transport in more than 90 towns and cities, free entry to over 500 museums, and 50% off most mountain railways. It is sold only to people living outside Switzerland and Liechtenstein, is bookable up to 11 months ahead, and is checked against a passport or ID card on the train. Travellers under 25 pay about 30% less.

An Interrail or Eurail pass works just as well for the ride itself if you are already crossing Europe on one. One caution on the Swiss One Country Pass: Interrail's own conditions say it cannot be used to travel to or from the country it covers, so it does not help with getting into Switzerland in the first place.

Whichever you hold, the reservation is booked separately with Glacier Express AG — 1st and 2nd class open 93 days before departure, Excellence Class for the whole timetable period.

Pass conditions and fares read from glacierexpress.ch (opens in a new tab), sbb.ch (opens in a new tab) and Interrail in August 2026.

The Glacier Express strings together some of Switzerland's most rewarding places to stop, so it pays to break the journey rather than ride it end to end in one go. Any of the stops below makes a natural place to spend a night and see the region beyond the train window.

Because the route rewards an overnight stop or two, it's worth choosing accommodation at the ends of the line or along the way. The picks below range from grand five-star landmarks in Zermatt and St. Moritz to a wellness retreat in the Rhine Gorge and a Belle Époque classic near Davos.