Scotland’s railway recorded 48,419,573 passenger journeys between 1 April and 30 September 2026, a seven per cent increase on the same six months a year earlier. The total was more than 3.1 million higher year on year, and 55 per cent above the spring and summer of 2022, when 31,212,745 journeys were recorded.
Growth outpaces the wider rail trend
The strongest like-for-like comparison in the latest figures covers April to June. ScotRail recorded 23.5 million journeys in those three months, up eight per cent year on year. The corresponding increase across Great Britain was two per cent. ScotRail describes its result as the highest growth among the larger train operating companies.
The six-month total captures both routine travel and an unusually busy events calendar. It includes the Glasgow 2026 Commonwealth Games, the Edinburgh Festivals, major concerts and summer music events. A single week, from 26 July to 1 August, saw 2.1 million journeys and became the busiest week since the railway returned to public ownership in April 2022. July alone saw 8,423,512 journeys, nearly 900,000 more than in July 2025.
Fare changes and special travel offers
The period was the first complete spring-and-summer season after ScotRail permanently removed peak fares in September 2025. The operator says that change made fares simpler and brought significant savings on many journeys. Fares are also frozen until March 2027. The figures show growth over the same period, but they do not isolate the effect of the fare change from employment patterns, service levels, events or other influences.
ScotRail also points to its £60 Family Pass, which allowed up to two adults and four children unlimited travel for seven consecutive days during the Easter holidays. The offer returned for the October school break. More than 800,000 journeys were made over Easter weekend, four per cent more than a year earlier. That short-period increase is one indication of leisure demand, rather than proof that one promotion explains the broader six-month rise.
Extra capacity was added for major occasions. More than 1,400 additional carriages were provided during the Commonwealth Games alone, with extra services and seats intended to help people travel to and from events. The figure refers to additional carriages supplied over the Games period; it should not be read as a permanent expansion of the fleet.
A longer recovery since 2022
The comparison with 2022 places the result in a longer-term context. The 48.4 million total is 17.2 million above the equivalent six-month period four years earlier. That is a substantial rise in journeys counted, though it does not by itself reveal how many unique passengers travelled: one person may make many journeys, and the measure is trips rather than individual travellers.
ScotRail attributes the increase to a combination of peak-fare removal, the fare freeze, family travel offers and major events. Its figures also indicate that demand rose faster in the April-to-June quarter than the two per cent Great Britain-wide increase. These comparisons describe passenger journeys, not punctuality, crowding, customer satisfaction or the financial performance of the railway.
For passengers, the practical significance is that the operator entered a busy summer with demand well above both the previous year and the 2022 baseline, while using temporary extra capacity for a major national event. The reported totals offer a useful measure of how heavily the network was used, but they cannot establish how much growth came from each fare measure, event or service decision.
