If you’ve ever braved the Christmas train schedule in, for example, the UK, you may worry about travel around Vienna during the Christmas market season.
Worry not.
- Public transport continues throughout the Christmas period
- Some longer intervals, particularly on December 25/26
- Access the main Christmas markets easily on foot or using buses, subways and trams
- The D tram line takes in four of the biggest markets
- Book a classical concert experience* for your Vienna trip
- See also:
Christmas travel services
(Several trams stop at Vienna’s most popular Christmas market on the central Rathausplatz)
Trains, buses and trams run normally in Vienna until the school Christmas holidays officially begin, which is typically just a day or two before Christmas itself.
In the 2025/2026 school year, for example, these official holidays run from December 24th to January 6th.
(Yes, schools keep going until remarkably close to the actual festivities.)
During that Christmas break, services switch to a slightly reduced holiday timetable.
Of course, the Viennese version of a reduced timetable is still mightily impressive.
“Reduced” largely means slightly longer intervals during early weekday mornings, when kids would otherwise be travelling to school. On timetables, look for the Ferien (English: school holidays) entries for Montag – Freitag (English: Monday to Friday):
(Christmas is Ferien time)
Those same timetables also have entries for Samstag (English: Saturdays) and Sonntag/Feiertage (English: Sundays and Public Holidays), when intervals also increase.
That Sonntag/Feiertage one is the one to watch over Christmas, given that the 25th and 26th are both public holidays. They fall on a Thursday and Friday in 2025.
(The column on the right applies to Sundays and public holidays)
Again, intervals might be longer than during normal weekdays, but still better than many other cities’ conventional timetables.
December 24th (a Wednesday in 2025) is an exception to the rule. During the 2024 holidays, the transport lines shifted to Saturday schedules until 6pm, and then switched to longer intervals (though no worse than every 15 minutes). Subway lines continued through the night.
These changes recognise that Austrian families tend to celebrate Christmas in the early evening of the 24th.
The Wiener Linien transport authority has timetables here (look for a tab marked something like 24. und 31. Dezember nearer the time) and an English-language route planner here.
Reaching the markets
Find travel advice for each market on their individual pages. But here some general tips for 2025:
- Many markets are close together and easily reached on foot if you’re staying in the centre of Vienna (see map below). For example:
- The Freyung market is just 200m from the Am Hof market
- The big Rathaus market is near another big one on Marie-Theresien-Platz
- Solid public transport options serve all the markets. A good tip is tram line D, which takes you past four top locations: the Rathaus, Maria-Theresien-Platz, Karlsplatz (great for unique arts & crafts) and Belvedere (very picturesque)
- Alternatively, routes taken by the hop on, hop off buses also cover those four, plus, for example, the market at Schönbrunn Palace