Interrail or Eurail gets you a special fare on Eurostar

• Eurostar joined the Interrail & Eurail pass schemes in January 2017.

  If you have an Interrail or Eurail pass you can use Eurostar between London & Lille, Paris, Brussels, Disneyland, Rotterdam & Amsterdam, but you must pay a special passholder fare.

  The direct Eurostar between London & Lyon/Avignon/Marseille & Eurostar ski trains between London & the French Alps are not covered.

• These passholder fares have limited availability and are not always available on the busiest trains or dates, so you should check availability before buying a pass.

How much is the Eurostar passholder fare?

• London to Lille, Brussels or Paris costs €30 in standard class or €38 in standard premier.

• London to Rotterdam or Amsterdam costs €35 in standard class or €43 in standard premier.

• The price is one-way, a round trip is two one-ways.

About these fares

• You qualify for a Eurostar passholder fare if you have an Interrail or Eurail global pass.  You don't qualify if you only have a one-country pass.

• If you've a 2nd class pass you can only book standard class.  If you've a 1st class pass you can book standard or standard premier.

• The passholder fare is the same for adults, seniors, youths & children.

  Children aged under 12 must still pay the adult passholder fare, even if they have a free Interrail or Eurail pass (but children under 4 travel free).

• Eurostar passholder fares are non-refundable, but can be changed for €15 fee using the Manage booking section on www.eurostar.com.

• If you have a flexi-type pass, you must use one of your travel days to travel on Eurostar - in other words, the Eurostar journey is not in addition to your pass days, it must take place on one of them.  But one pass day can cover a train up to London, then Eurostar, then an onward train on the Continent.

• You don't need to have activated the pass to buy the Eurostar passholder fare, you only need to have bought a pass so you have a valid pass number.  Buying a passholder fare for a particular date does not commit you to using your pass on that day.  In fact, there is absolutely no connection between making a reservation and using your pass, they are entirely separate.  You can leave your pass un-activated, and if you so wish, later bin the passholder fare and use your pass on a completely different date and a completely different route, whatever.

• Inbound/outbound days:

  If you have an Interrail pass, you can only use it in your home country on a maximum of two days, normally the first & last days of your trip to get you out of the country & back home.  If you live in Great Britain, Eurostar counts as a journey in your home country, so triggers one of your two permitted inbound/outbound days.  You can take other trains the same day of course, for example Edinburgh-London-Paris-Orleans on your first day, Bruges-Brussels-London-Edinburgh on your last day, but no, you can't go Edinburgh-London day 1, stay overnight in London, London-Paris day 2, then Brussels-London-Edinburgh on your last day, because that would be 3 inbound/outbound home country days and you're limited to 2.  More information about inbound/outbound journeys in your home country.

• See the Eurostar page for a guide to Eurostar's trains, classes, check-in procedures and journey.

  Tip:  You may need to check in at a staffed kiosk where Eurostar staff can check your Interrail/Eurail pass if your passholder ticket doesn't work the automatic check-in gates (you'll get a red See staff warning).  Remember to record the Eurostar journey in your travel diary (if using a paper pass) or add the Eurostar journey to My trip and link it to your pass (if using a mobile pass), as with any other train journey.

• Remember that Eurostar's regular fares start at £78 return without a pass if you book well in advance and avoid busy days, so only buy a pass if the cheapest tickets have sold out, if you're using other trains before or after the Eurostar journey making it worthwhile.

Availability is limited, here's how it works

• You can check availability of passholder places before you buy a pass using www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass.

  This system does not need a pass number to show you passholder  availability.  I strongly recommend that you check before you buy a pass, as places for Interrail & Eurail passholders are limited.  You cannot just turn up and expect to board any Eurostar you like.  Here's how it works:

• Eurostar has dynamic pricing, managed using 'price buckets' like an airline.  There are around a dozen buckets, let's say bucket 1 is the most expensive and always available as long as there are any seats at all left on that train, and price bucket 12 is the cheapest, available if you book months ahead for a wet Wednesday in February.  Eurostar in fact uses two-letter bucket names such as BZ, I'm simplifying...

  The Interrail/Eurail passholder fare is in the 3rd bucket down from top, bucket 3.  Which means availability is pretty good, even at short notice.

  If you book in advance you'll usually find plenty of availability, but maybe not on the busiest trains on a Friday or Sunday afternoon.  If you book on the day of travel you'll often find availability on some trains, but not all trains, or perhaps on a few trains tomorrow but none today.

  However, on busy dates, days and trains you'll find that buckets 1 or 2 are available for normal travellers paying cash, but bucket 3 is unavailable meaning no passholder places, even though the train isn't full.  Friday & Sunday afternoons are very busy and so is July & August.

  Put another way, if you check prices on the main Eurostar website www.eurostar.com, if the 'real' price is £143 or less on a given train, €30 passholder places should be available, but if normal prices are £160 or higher, there will be no passholder places on that train.

• Tip:  See for yourself!  www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass to see what availability looks today, tomorrow, next week...

• Tip:  I've known people turn up in Paris in July or August to find the next Eurostar with passholder places is in 3 days' time. If this happens, don't forget you can always catch a train to Calais or Caen and take a ferry back to Dover or Portsmouth, see the London to Paris by train & ferry page.  Or from Amsterdam or Brussels, use the Hoek-Harwich Stena Line service between Amsterdam & London.

• Tip:  If there's no availability from London to Paris (or Paris to London), book London to Lille (or Lille to London) instead.  You can then use a French domestic train between Lille & Paris, either a direct TGV for a €10/€20 fee or TERs (with a change at Amiens or Aulnoye) with no fee.

How to buy a Eurostar passholder ticket

Option 1, buy online at www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass

• You can check availability of Eurostar passholder places on Belgian Railways website www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass before buying a pass because (unlike option 2 below) you do not need a pass number to run an enquiry and see availability.

  You should see passholder fares at the prices listed above.  Only trains with passholder places available show up.

  With a 1st class pass you can travel in either class.  With a 2nd class pass only standard class Eurostar tickets will show up.

  When you've bought a pass and have a pass number, you can buy your Eurostar passholder ticket here.

  B-europe charge a €4 booking fee, on the overall booking.  In option 2 below the fee is only €2, but per person not per booking.

  You can print out your Eurostar ticket or can show it on your phone in the B-Europe app or Eurostar app.

  Tip:  Booking usually opens 6 months ahead.  Eurostar trains can sometimes appear open for booking up to 330 days ahead, but you may find that no Interrail passholder places are available until less than 6 months before departure, if so don't panic, just wait!

• Important:  If you have a mobile pass and it won't accept the mobile pass number, simply generate a pass cover number from your mobile pass number using this special page: www.eurail.com/en/book-reservations#/generatePassCoverNumber.

  That should work, but if not, go to eurail.zendesk.com/hc/en-001/requests/new and ask for an InterRail cover number.

• Tip:  Once you've bought your passholder ticket, you can choose better seats from a Eurostar seating plan like this:

  Go to www.eurostar.com, click Manage booking and enter your Eurostar booking reference & last name.  The Eurostar booking reference is the 6-digit alphanumeric one shown as Reservation code on your B-Europe ticket.

  When your booking appears click Change seats and select your preferred seats from a Eurostar seating plan.  The Eurostar website will email you another ticket showing your new seat.  Change seats usually appears, but occasionally doesn't if the Eurostar has already become very full.

• Please let me know if the direct link to www.b-europe.com/EN/Booking/Pass stops working.  To navigate from their home page:

  1.  On the www.b-europe.com home page, hover over Plan & book then click Interrail Pass.

  2.  Scroll down to THALYS AND EUROSTAR PASS FARE and click Book your Thalys or Eurostar pass fare now.

Option 2, buy online using the InterRail/Eurail reservations service

• You can book Eurostar passholder reservations using the official Interrail/Eurail reservation service at www.interrail.eu or www.eurail.com.

• Click BOOK RESERVATIONS at the top, enter your pass number and use the journey planner to bring up train departures for the route you want.

• In this case you need an Interrail or Eurail pass number even to run an enquiry, so you can't check availability before buying a pass, although if you have a pass you don't need to have activated it yet.  Eurostar reservations are automated, the ticket is emailed to you minutes after booking.

• It's a good system, quick and easy to use, although you get no control over seat or berth position, even 'window' or 'aisle' cannot be specified.  There's a small booking fee of €2 per person, so they are cheaper than b-europe.com if there's only one of you.  Maybe use b-europe to check availability before buying the pass, buy the pass, then buy the reservation at the Interrail/Eurail site!

• You can also make passholder bookings in the Interrail/Eurail Railplanner app on your phone - I recommend this app for its usefulness for offline timetable enquiries in any case, and mobile passes are displayed using this app.  Download the app at www.eurail.com/en/plan-your-trip/rail-planner-app.

• Tip:  Booking usually opens 6 months ahead.  Eurostar trains can sometimes appear open for booking up to 330 days ahead, but you may find that no Interrail passholder places are available until less than 6 months before departure, if so don't don't panic, just wait!

• Tip:  Once you've bought your passholder ticket, you can usually choose better seats from a Eurostar seating plan like this:

  Go to www.eurostar.com, click Manage booking and enter the 6-digit alphanumeric Eurostar booking reference & last name.  When your booking appears click Change seats and select your preferred seats from a Eurostar seating plan.  The Eurostar website will email you another ticket showing your new seat.  The seat choice link may not appear if the train is already pretty full.

Option 3, buy at the station or call Eurostar telesales

• Eurostar passholder fares are available directly from the Eurostar ticket offices at London St Pancras, Lille Europe, Paris Gare du Nord & Brussels Midi, or by phone from Eurostar telesales on 03432 186 186 (UK) or +44 1233 617575 (overseas) but there may be a phone booking fee.  You will need your pass number.

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