Deutsche Bahn has announced that booking a seat on one of its long-distance trains will be more expensive from June 15, 2025. Critics are hoping for a U-turn in the coming days.
Starting this weekend, passengers travelling on Deutsche Bahn’s long-distance ICE or IC trains will have to pay 5,50 euros to book a seat, up from 5,20 euros. Seat reservations on Deutsche Bahn are not automatically included in a booking and must be paid separately.
The rail company will also scrap its family reservation ticket (Familienreservierung), which allowed families to book seats for two adults and their children for the fixed, group price of 10,40 euros.
Children under 14 years old who are accompanied by an adult can still travel for free, but families will now have to pay 5,50 euros to reserve a seat for each child. This means a family of two adults and two children will see the cost of reserving seats increase from 10,40 euros to 22 euros for a one-way journey.
“Families with children are dependent on booking a seat,” Kerstin Haarmann of the Environmental Transport Club (VCD) said in a press release responding to the price rises. “We advise DB to focus less on short-term discount campaigns and instead keep the general offer affordable".
German parties from across the political spectrum are already urging Deutsche Bahn to rethink its policy change. “Summer holidays are increasingly becoming a luxury for families with children,” Katharina Dröge (Greens) told RedaktionsNetzwerk Deutschland (RND).
Dröge said Deutsche Bahn should seriously reconsider a “bad mistake” which contradicts the rail operator’s overall goal of increasing passenger numbers. The environmental organisation Greenpeace and Germany’s passenger rights association ProBahn also expressed criticism, warning of negative social and environmental effects.
Critics are hoping the rail operator will U-turn, which has happened in the past. In December 2024, the company announced it would remove printed arrival timetables displayed on platforms, but backtracked two days later following widespread criticism.
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