Train travel in Bosnia and Herzegovina

Bosnia and Herzegovina has one train journey worth planning a trip around, and a rail network that will otherwise disappoint you.

Sarajevo to Mostar runs twice a day through the Neretva gorge on a comfortable Talgo train, and it is one of the best value rail rides in Europe. Almost everything else is either gone, suspended, or in a different half of the country that you cannot reach by train.

That sounds harsh. It is also the honest answer, and knowing it before you book saves you the trip to a ticket window that will tell you the same thing.

Two railways, one country

Bosnia and Herzegovina has no single national train company. The Dayton Agreement of 1995 split the country into two entities, and the railway split with it.

ŽFBH (Željeznice Federacije Bosne i Hercegovine) runs passenger trains in the Federation of Bosnia and Herzegovina. That is the Sarajevo half: the line south to Konjic, Jablanica, Mostar and Čapljina, the line north to Zenica and Maglaj, and local trains out to Visoko and Pazarić.

ŽRS (Željeznice Republike Srpske) runs passenger trains in Republika Srpska. That is Doboj to Banja Luka, Banja Luka to Novi Grad and Dobrljin, and Doboj to Petrovo Novo. BHŽJK exists above both as a coordinating body, but it does not run trains, so you will never buy a ticket from it.

The practical consequence matters more than the politics. ŽFBH's northern line now stops at Maglaj and no longer reaches Doboj, so no scheduled passenger train connects the two networks. You cannot ride from one entity's railway onto the other's.

Sarajevo to Mostar is the journey to take

Book this one. It is the reason to bother with trains in Bosnia at all.

Two trains run each way per day between Sarajevo and Čapljina, calling at Mostar on the way. They are Talgo sets, air conditioned, with a café bar, and they follow the Neretva river through a gorge for most of the way south. The full run to Čapljina takes about two and a half hours, and Mostar comes up a little under two hours in. Treat the Mostar figure as orientation: ŽFBH publishes the end to end times below but not the intermediate ones.

Mostar is the last major stop before Čapljina, so if you are getting off or joining there, confirm the Mostar time at the ticket window rather than working it out from the table. Sit on the left going south from Sarajevo. That is the river side, and the gorge section between Konjic and Jablanica is the part people photograph.

The morning southbound train and the late afternoon northbound train make a day trip from Sarajevo work without an overnight stay. The gap between them is about seven hours in Mostar, which is enough for the old bridge, lunch, and a slow walk back.

The summer train to the Adriatic

From 26 June to 27 September 2026, one of the Sarajevo trains continues across the Croatian border to Ploče on the Adriatic coast. Train 1391 leaves Sarajevo at 07:15 and reaches Ploče at 10:36. Train 1390 leaves Ploče at 18:26 and gets back to Sarajevo at 21:54.

It runs on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays only, not daily. Some pass-seller pages describe it as a daily summer service and they are wrong; ŽFBH's own timetable and its homepage notice both say three days a week. Trust the operator here.

Tickets for the Ploče service are not sold online at all, even when ŽFBH's online sales are working. Buy at the station counter. Outside that summer window the same trains terminate at Čapljina, which leaves the last 37 km to the coast to be covered by road.

There is no train from Sarajevo to Banja Luka

This is the single most common wrong assumption about Bosnian rail, so it is worth being blunt about it. There is no through train, and there is no connecting train either, because the two networks do not meet on any line that carries passengers.

Take the bus. It runs about 19 times a day, takes around four hours, and starts at roughly 55 BAM one way with eleven different companies on the route. The last direct Sarajevo to Banja Luka train was withdrawn around 2020 and never came back.

Doboj to Tuzla is the other route people look for and it is also gone. The last passenger train ran in December 2019, ridership had collapsed, and neither operator's timetable lists Tuzla as a station any more. A large reconstruction project for that corridor has been discussed for years, but nothing has been built and no restart date exists.

Trains in Republika Srpska

ŽRS runs a daily domestic passenger service in the 2025/2026 timetable, which took effect on 14 December 2025 and runs until 12 December 2026. The routes are Doboj to Banja Luka, Banja Luka to Novi Grad, Dobrljin to Banja Luka, and Doboj to Petrovo Novo.

These are local trains, useful mainly if you are already in the north and travelling between those towns. ŽRS's network runs to 416.996 km of line, of which 308.254 km is electrified, and every line carrying passengers is standard gauge.

One planning warning, and it is a real one. ŽRS's timetable lives inside an interactive journey planner on its own site rather than a printable table, the Doboj to Banja Luka line has had repeated short closures for landslides and cable faults, and the company's staff have gone into pay disputes serious enough to put services at risk. Check your specific departure with ŽRS a day or two ahead instead of assuming a published pattern holds, and keep a bus option in reserve on the day you actually need to move.

Bosnia is cut off from the European rail network

No regular international passenger train crosses into Bosnia and Herzegovina. The Zagreb link went in 2016 and 2017, blamed by Interrail and Eurail on construction works and by regional press on a dispute over infrastructure fees with the Croatian side. The Sarajevo to Belgrade train stopped running around 2013. Budapest went the same way, and none of the three has come back.

So if you are threading Bosnia into a Balkan rail trip, plan a bus leg in and a bus leg out. Zagreb bus station has a couple of Sarajevo departures a day, in the early afternoon and the late afternoon. Belgrade to Sarajevo runs around seven times a day and takes between seven and a half and nine hours depending on the operator and the border. Neither is glamorous, and both are the only option.

The one exception is the seasonal Ploče train described above, which does physically cross into Croatia. It is a domestic Bosnian service extended over the border rather than a connection to the wider network, and it will not link you to anything useful in Croatia beyond Ploče itself.

A new domestic service between Bihać and Bosanska Otoka starts on 31 August 2026, the first regular train on that stretch in thirteen years. It is worth knowing about if you are in the north west corner, but it does not continue to Zagreb and it does not reopen the old Una line.

Tickets, fares and reservations

Buy at the station counter and pay in convertible marks. Bosnia uses the convertible mark, written BAM or KM, and station ticket offices are cash friendly in a way that card readers are not always.

A second class one way ticket from Sarajevo to Mostar has been running at about 14 BAM, and about 17 BAM through to Čapljina, with roughly 20 percent off a return. Treat those as orientation rather than a quoted fare: ŽFBH does not publish a domestic price list on its own website, so the counter is the authority. Only second class tickets are sold on the Talgo trains even though the carriages have first class seating.

There are no seat reservations anywhere in Bosnia and Herzegovina. You board and sit where you like, and on a two trains a day service that has never been a problem for space.

ŽFBH normally sells tickets online up to two weeks ahead, with collection at the station before you travel. Online sales have been switched off for a technical fault, and the Ploče trains were never sold online in the first place. Assume you are buying in person, and arrive with enough time to queue. Interrail and Eurail both list Bosnian trains as not carrying bikes, so plan a bus or a car if you are travelling with one.

Using an Interrail or Eurail pass here

Bosnia and Herzegovina is one of the 33 countries in the Interrail and Eurail Global Pass, and there is no One Country Pass for Bosnia, so a Global Pass is the only pass that covers it.

Do not count on the pass getting you onto the Sarajevo to Mostar train. Interrail and Eurail's own country pages say that only a paper pass is accepted, and only on ŽRS trains, which are the northern local services and not the Talgo you actually want to ride. Their participating railway companies table says something different and lists ŽFBH fast and local trains as covered. Both pages are published by the same company and they contradict each other.

The good news is that this argument is cheap to lose. A second class ticket to Mostar costs about the same as a coffee and a sandwich, so buy one at the counter and keep the pass for a country where it does real work. If you want to try the pass anyway, bring the paper version, because mobile passes are not accepted anywhere in Bosnia, and ask at the ticket window before boarding rather than on the train.

Sarajevo station

Sarajevo's railway station sits next door to the main bus station, which is useful given how much of Bosnian travel happens by coach. Tram number 1 stops outside and loops into the old town.

The station itself is thin on facilities. There is no bureau de change, no cash machine and no left luggage office inside. All three are at the bus station next door, where luggage storage runs at 2 BAM per item for the first hour and 1 BAM per item after that. The ticket office has been keeping roughly 06:00 to 17:00 hours, so an early or late arrival can find it shut and there is no machine to fall back on.

Mostar's station sits beside the eastern bus terminal, and travellers report left luggage at one or other of the two. Banja Luka's station is said to have a tourist information desk and a luggage store. Neither operator publishes its station facilities, so treat both as likely rather than guaranteed and do not build a plan around dropping bags there.

Whether the train is the right choice

Take the train from Sarajevo to Mostar, and from Mostar or Sarajevo to Ploče in summer if the days line up. On that corridor the train beats the bus on comfort and scenery, costs very little, and drops you in the middle of both cities.

Take the bus for everything else. Bosnia's bus network is dense, frequent, and reaches the places the railway abandoned, including Banja Luka, Tuzla, Zagreb and Belgrade. Choosing rail on those routes is not a slower option, it is not an option at all.