The Best Luxury Trains in Europe 2026: Nine Trains Scored

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express is the best luxury train in Europe in 2026, at 92 out of 100 on route, cabins, dining, rarity, value and record; the Royal Scotsman scores 86, the Golden Eagle Danube Express 83, Al Ándalus 81 and La Dolce Vita Orient Express 80. The Orient Express starts at GBP 3,885 for a Historic Cabin between Venice and Paris; Al Ándalus runs seven days from Madrid to Seville from EUR 6,600; the Bernina Express crosses the finest Alpine line in Europe for CHF 96 and a CHF 36 reservation. Three different products wear the same label here, and confusing them is the expensive mistake. The index says who operates each train, where it goes and what decides its score; the breakdown, the booking calendar and the questions readers ask follow.

The sleepers: Belmond, Accor and the Golden Eagle

The Venice Simplon-Orient-Express runs eight routes in 2026, from the classic Paris–Venice night to Paris–Florence, Paris–Portofino with a stay at the Splendido, Istanbul–Paris over five nights and, new in May 2026, Paris to the Amalfi Coast. Belmond prices 2026 in sterling and 2027 in euros: a Historic Cabin from GBP 3,885 Venice–Paris, GBP 4,275 Paris–Venice and GBP 19,900 Istanbul–Paris; Suites from GBP 10,625 Paris–Florence and GBP 17,400 Paris–Portofino. Those are fares, not trip costs. Every route and cabin class is priced out on what the Orient Express costs, the routes are compared on Orient Express itineraries, and the full guide is here.

The Royal Scotsman circles the Highlands from Edinburgh Waverley with 18 sleeper cabins, two dining cars and a Dior Spa car, two to seven nights, and takes 14 out of 15 on value for what an all-inclusive Belmond night actually covers; the guide is Royal Scotsman, the Highland alternative. The Britannic Explorer takes London to Cornwall, Wales and the Lakes over three nights and scores 78 because it launched in July 2025 and has no record yet. Both sit inside the group covered in the Belmond dossier. La Dolce Vita Orient Express, Accor’s train rather than Belmond’s, now lists twenty-four itineraries out of Rome, Venice, Palermo and Istanbul with a restaurant car under three-Michelin-starred Heinz Beck; it scores 80 with the same new-entrant deduction.

The Golden Eagle Danube Express is the one most readers have never heard of and the one that answers the question they are usually asking. It is a genuine long-hauler: Istanbul to Paris in eight days, Venice to Istanbul in twelve, Budapest through Zurich to Venice in eleven, plus Transylvania, the Christmas markets and a Sicilian run to Taormina. Superior Deluxe gives twelve cabins a departure with a king bed and two picture windows; Deluxe carriages carry five en-suite cabins each. No prices are published anywhere on the operator’s site, which costs it three points on value and is worth knowing before you enquire. Multi-day rail packages that bundle the hotel nights, transfers and a guide are sold on TourRadar (affiliate link).

Spain: a rebuilt route for 2026

The Al Ándalus fare is properly all-in: accommodation, breakfast, lunch and dinner with wine, water, soft drinks and coffee, excursions and scheduled visits, entries to museums, monuments and shows, live music and the pub car, and a multilingual guide for the whole tour. Six nights at EUR 6,600 works out near EUR 1,100 a night against the Orient Express’s GBP 3,885 for one, and the new route reaches four separate UNESCO sites — the Royal Palace of Aranjuez, the windmills of Campo de Criptana, the Roman ruins of Mérida and the Mosque-Cathedral of Córdoba. It loses points against Belmond on cabins and on drama out of the window, not on hospitality.

One Spanish train is deliberately absent from the scoring. El Transcantábrico Gran Lujo, Renfe’s narrow-gauge sleeper along the north coast between San Sebastián and Santiago de Compostela, is named here but not scored: neither Renfe’s own pages nor the train’s site could be reached to verify routes, suites or 2026 fares, and this site does not score what it cannot check. It will be assessed on the next quarterly pass. For the nights either side of a Spanish departure, Booking.com (affiliate link) has the deepest inventory in Seville, Madrid and San Sebastián, and station transfers at both ends are cheaper fixed in advance on GetTransfer (affiliate link) than improvised on arrival.

The Alps: two day trains and the honest arithmetic

The Glacier Express Excellence Class is a day train from Zermatt to St. Moritz in about eight hours where a CHF 540 mandatory seat reservation on top of a valid first-class ticket buys a guaranteed window seat in a twenty-seat carriage, a champagne aperitif and welcome platter, a seasonal regional five-course menu with wine, a concierge, the Glacier Bar and platform check-in. It is not available between 9 and 27 March 2026. That is a real luxury product and it is also, at 8 out of 20 on cabins, honestly scored as something you do not sleep on.

The Bernina Express is the paragraph the sleeper operators would rather you skipped. Chur to Tirano takes about three and a half hours over the UNESCO World Heritage Thusis–Valposchiavo–Tirano line, and the fare is CHF 96 in second class or CHF 164 in first, plus a seat reservation of CHF 36 in summer and CHF 32 in winter. There is no restaurant car and no bed, which is why it scores 5 on dining and 5 on cabins. There is also no better hour-for-hour view from a train anywhere in Europe. Booking one of these while wanting the other is the most common and most expensive mistake in European rail. Day trips at the Alpine gateways are on GetYourGuide (affiliate link), and the stays either end are covered in Switzerland’s alpine summer stays and the Alps in summer.

How the nine trains are scored

Trains are re-scored quarterly. Nothing here is scored on request, the operators had no input, and the case against each train — the daylight-only format, the new-entrant record, the unpublished fare — is printed in the same row as the case for. Scores are held identical to the world index of twelve trains for the five that appear on both, so the two pages cannot contradict each other. A train can move: the Britannic Explorer and La Dolce Vita will gain record points as their second seasons complete, and El Transcantábrico enters the table as soon as its figures can be verified.

When and how to book

Two rules beat brand knowledge. First, buy the route, not the train: the same Belmond carriages feel different on a one-night Paris–Venice and a five-night Istanbul run, and the Danube Express is a different holiday on the eight-day Istanbul–Paris than on the Sicilian Odyssey. Second, price the whole trip: hotels either end, transfers and excursions routinely add 40 to 60 per cent to a headline fare, and the complete guide to luxury train journeys walks through the arithmetic. An Orient Express night into Venice followed by a Bernina crossing a few days later is the connoisseur’s double, and it costs less than two Belmond nights.

Two practical notes. Switzerland, the United Kingdom and Turkey sit outside EU roaming, so a route that crosses them wants an Airalo regional eSIM (affiliate link) rather than a domestic bundle; the detail is in the Europe eSIM guide. And the wider question of when to travel is answered month by month in the best time to visit Europe, with the rail-versus-road-versus-air trade-off in getting around Europe. Beyond Europe, the twelve best trains on earth are ranked on the world index, with Rovos Rail and the Twilight Express Mizukaze covered in full; the wider desk is at expeditions.

Straight answers to the questions readers ask