Trains across Germany briefly halted after communication system issue

Germany's railway system was brought to a halt on Tuesday evening, leaving passengers stranded across the country following an IT issue.

The main national railway operator, Deutsche Bahn, said all trains were held at stations because of a nationwide problem with a digital communication system.

Nearly two-and-a-half hours after it first reported the outage, Deutsche Bahn said the problem had been resolved and its service was resuming "step by step".

It came after the company said there was a nationwide problem with the GSM-R (Global System for Mobile Communications-Railway) system.

Not long after the outage, the company said it had identified the cause of the issue, but did not specify what it was.

The system is used for internal communication on the railway network.

Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla was quoted by The Bild newspaper, saying they "were able to stabilise the situation with an emergency system".

During the outage, the company said ​it would issue taxi ​and hotel vouchers to passengers ⁠and offer replacement transport where possible.

It also apologised for the disruption.

Train delays and disruption has become more common in Germany in recent years.

Government-owned Deutsche Bahn has started conducting overhauls of major routes in a bid to improve its performance.

(c) Sky News 2026: Trains across Germany briefly halted after communication system issue