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Ticket to Ride: Europe
The best-loved European edition of Ticket to Ride, where tunnels, ferries (which need locomotives) and train stations are added to make connecting up a rail network even more tense. The main goal is to collect train cards by color, claim routes, and complete your destination tickets.
Rules
The skeleton is the same as the North America base game, but ferries, tunnels, and stations are added. You cannot tell how long a tunnel will really be until you commit to it, and a station lets you borrow one route from another player. This is not an expansion — it is complete on its own.
What is the same as the base game
Drawing cards, claiming routes, destination tickets, double routes, the longest path bonus, and the end condition are the same as in the North America base game. This guide covers only what changed. For the basic flow, read the «Ticket to Ride» guide first.
- 45 train cars, 110 train cards (8 types × 12 plus 14 locomotives), 5 turned face up.
- One action per turn: draw 2 cards / claim a route / draw 3 tickets.
- Taking a face-up locomotive ends your draw for that turn. If 3 of the 5 face-up cards are locomotives, replace all of them.
- You cannot split a route across two turns, and you may claim only one route per turn.
- When a player is down to 2 or fewer train cars, everyone takes one more turn and the game ends. The longest path bonus is paid to every player tied for it.
Change ① Setup and long route tickets
- You also take 3 train stations in your color.
- There are 46 destination tickets. Separate the 6 «long routes» with a blue background, shuffle them, and deal 1 at random to each player. Any long routes left over go back in the box without anyone seeing them.
- Then shuffle the regular tickets and deal 3 to each player.
- Keep at least 2 of the tickets you were dealt. What you discard may be the long route or a regular one.
- Discarded tickets go into the box, not to the bottom of the pile.
A long route ticket is worth a lot but runs across the map. Whether to keep it is your first decision. If this is your first game of Europe, dropping it is fine.
The player who has traveled to the most European countries goes first.
Change ② Ferries — you must play locomotives
A ferry is a gray route that links two cities across water. You can spot one by the locomotive symbols on at least one of its spaces. You must play one locomotive for each symbol, and fill the remaining spaces with cards of any one color.
Change ③ Tunnels — you never know how long it is
- 1A tunnel has a special outline around its spaces. First play as many cards as the route is long.
- 2Then turn the top 3 cards of the train card deck face up.
- 3For every revealed card that is the same color as the cards you played, you must play one more card of that color (or a locomotive).
- 4Once you have played all the extra cards, the tunnel is yours.
- 5If you have nothing to play, or do not want to, take all your cards back into your hand and your turn ends.
A locomotive always counts as a match
A locomotive among the 3 revealed cards always counts as matching your color, so it forces an extra card. The other way around, if you tried to get through the tunnel with locomotives only, you owe extra cards only when locomotives turn up (and then they have to be locomotives).
| Cards played | Among the 3 revealed | Extra to play |
|---|---|---|
| 2 red | 1 red turns up | 1 more red |
| 2 green | 1 locomotive turns up | 1 more green (a locomotive counts as a match) |
| 2 locomotives | 1 locomotive turns up | 1 more locomotive |
| 3 blue | nothing matches | none — the route is yours |
The 3 cards revealed for the tunnel are discarded at the end of the turn. If the draw and discard piles hold fewer than 3, reveal only what is there; with none at all, you claim the tunnel with no extra risk.
Change ④ Train stations — borrow another player's route once
There is one more action
In Europe a turn has four options: draw cards · claim a route · draw tickets · build a train station.
| Which station | Cost |
|---|---|
| First | 1 card of any color |
| Second | 2 cards of the same color |
| Third | 3 cards of the same color |
- A station may only go in a city where nobody has built one yet. The city does not need a single claimed route.
- Two players may never build a station in the same city.
- One station per turn, and 3 in the whole game.
- Locomotives can stand in for the cards.
- A station lets you use one route of another player into or out of that city as your own connection. Just one.
- Even if the same station serves several tickets, the borrowed route is fixed to a single one. You do not have to decide which one until the game ends.
- Each station you leave unused is worth 4 points.
Route scoring and final scoring
| Route length | Points |
|---|---|
| 1 space | 1 point |
| 2 spaces | 2 points |
| 3 spaces | 4 points |
| 4 spaces | 7 points |
| 6 spaces | 15 points |
| 8 spaces | 21 points |
The scoring table differs from the North America base game. Europe has no 5-space routes and does have 8-space routes. An 8-space route is worth 21 points at once.
- Reveal your destination tickets, adding the ones you completed and subtracting the ones you did not.
- Add 4 points for each unused station.
- The player with the Longest Continuous Path takes the European Express bonus card for 10 points.
Commonly confused rules
Q. Do I need the base game to play Europe?
No. It is a standalone game. The map, cards, and train cars are all in the box.
Q. What happens if I cannot play the extra cards for a tunnel?
You take all the cards you played back into your hand and your turn ends. You lose no cards, but you do lose the turn.
Q. Can I claim a ferry without locomotives?
No. You must play one locomotive for each locomotive symbol on the route.
Q. Does a station let me use every route another player has in that city?
No, only one. And even across several tickets it stays fixed to that same single route.
Q. Is it better to leave a station unbuilt?
An unused station is worth 4 points. If a station saves a ticket it is usually worth using, but if the ticket is worth less than 4 points you are better off keeping the station.
Q. Can I hold more than one long route ticket?
You are dealt only one during setup. And when you draw tickets during the game, the regular ticket pile has no long routes mixed into it.
Q. Can a discarded ticket come back?
Tickets discarded during setup go into the box and never return. That is different from the North America base game.
History and editions
| Item | Detail |
|---|---|
| Designer | Alan R. Moon |
| Publisher | Days of Wonder, 2005 |
| Original | «Ticket to Ride», 2004 — winner of the Spiel des Jahres |
| Where it sits | The most widely recommended way into the series. Ferries, tunnels, and stations widen the strategy |
If you pick only one game in the series, Europe is a safe choice. It adds three rules over the North America base game and none of them is complicated, and its many double routes keep a large group from feeling cramped.
Sources
Official Days of Wonder rulebook (Ticket to Ride Europe, English)Wiki cross-check — Wikipedia: Ticket to RideWiki cross-check — Namuwiki: Ticket to RideRule summaries are reference content written by us, not quotations from the official rulebook. Always check the official rulebook for exact rules. Diagrams are original schematics, not rulebook illustrations.
Spotted a mistake? Tell us in the comments below →
Last updated 2026-09-14
💡 Master tip
Even when someone blocks your way, a train station lets you borrow one of their routes to complete your destination, so save your stations for when you need them. The 10-point European Express bonus for the Longest Continuous Path is as big as a destination ticket, so keeping your track unbroken is also worth considering.
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