China Railways Eyes 24.15M Trips on Holiday’s Final Day

China’s national railway network expects to carry about 24.15 million passengers on Wednesday, October 7, the final day of the country’s combined National Day and Mid-Autumn Festival holiday, as millions of travelers head home at the close of one of the world’s largest annual travel surges. According to Xinhua News, the holiday transport period began on September 23 and had already moved more than 250 million passengers by October 6.

To absorb the return peak, railway authorities scheduled 2,449 additional trains nationwide for the day, with capacity concentrated on the busiest corridors linking major cities.

A Fifteen-Day Travel Window

The 2026 travel season is unusual because the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holidays fell back-to-back, creating a single extended break that began in late September and runs through Wednesday. The holiday railway transport period covers roughly 16 days, from September 23 to October 7.

As 21st Century Business Herald reported at the start of the period, China State Railway Group projected about 284 million passenger trips over the full window, with an average of roughly 13,000 passenger trains operating daily and October 1 forecast as the single busiest day.

The two holidays generated overlapping but distinct flows. Mid-Autumn produced mainly short-distance, regional travel, while National Day drove long-distance, cross-province journeys—a combination that officials said would keep volumes “at a high level, with some sections and time periods highly concentrated.”

Where the Crowds Are Headed

The return surge is uneven across the country’s regional railway bureaus, each of which reported heavier demand than a year ago.

• Beijing Railway Bureau expected passenger volume to rise about 15 percent year-on-year, adding 169.5 train pairs, largely toward Harbin, Shenyang, Dalian and Datong.
• Shanghai Railway Bureau planned to carry 4.15 million passengers and scheduled 210 additional nighttime high-speed trains to help travelers return on time.
• Guangzhou Railway Bureau projected a 20.8 percent year-on-year increase, adding 765 trains on routes including the Beijing-Guangzhou, Guangzhou-Shenzhen-Hong Kong, Hangzhou-Shenzhen and Jiangmen-Zhanjiang lines.

The Guangzhou-based figures underscore how the southern hub is a focal point of the return flow. A bureau spokesperson said Guangzhou planned to run 3,627 trains on Wednesday, including 516 additional services, and to add 252 night high-speed trains in the early hours of October 8 for onward travel to Changsha, Chaoshan and Zhanjiang.

Managing the World’s Busiest Network

Handling tens of millions of journeys in a single day requires more than adding trains. China Railway has leaned on so-called high-peak operating diagrams, nighttime high-speed services, coupled or doubled train sets and high-speed sleeper trains to stretch available capacity.

Ticketing is managed just as tightly. At the start of the period, the railway ticketing platform 12306 had sold 96.21 million holiday tickets, and authorities placed 7.117 million transactions into a “slow queue” while refusing to issue tickets for 1.023 million more—about 1.331 million tickets in total—to curb automated and malicious ticket-grabbing, according to 21st Century Business Herald.

The scale is difficult to overstate. At an average of 24 million-plus trips a day, China’s railways are moving a population larger than most countries’ entire citizenry in a matter of hours—twice over the holiday period alone.

Why It Matters

The holiday rush is more than a logistics puzzle; it is a barometer of the country’s consumer economy. Industry forecasts ahead of the break pointed to record travel interest, with student group-travel willingness up roughly 60 percent year-on-year and a rising share of cross-province trips, according to figures cited in the state media coverage.

A smooth, high-capacity return flow therefore carries economic as well as operational significance: it sustains spending in tourism, hospitality and retail at a time when domestic demand is a priority for policymakers.

What’s Next

Attention now shifts to Thursday, October 8, when the last of the returning travelers are expected to reach their destinations. Additional nighttime high-speed services—including hundreds added by the Guangzhou and Shanghai bureaus—are designed to clear the remaining backlog.

Beyond the immediate peak, the railway group’s 284 million-trip projection for the full period will be measured against the actual tally, offering a fresh reading on the strength of China’s holiday travel demand and, by extension, its broader consumer recovery.

For now, the focus is narrower: getting 24.15 million people home.