SNCF Voyageurs is the passenger rail company of the SNCF group, created on 1 January 2020 and wholly owned by the group’s parent company. It carries around 5 million passengers a day on some 15,000 trains, operating TGV INOUI, Ouigo, Intercités, TER and Transilien.
SNCF Voyageurs operates TGV INOUI and Ouigo commercially and at its own risk, with fares covering rolling stock, energy, staff, stations and track access. Intercités, TER and Transilien run under public service contracts awarded by the State and by the regions.
On the commercial services the company sets its own fares and its own network. On contracted services the transport authority specifies the service and the fares, and finances roughly three-quarters of the cost of regional operations.
A transport authority replacing the incumbent needs a bidder with drivers and depots already in place, and outside the densest corridors those resources sit almost entirely inside SNCF Voyageurs. On the contracted regional and suburban networks that leaves few realistic alternatives if the company fails, whatever competition has developed on the high-speed corridors.
The 2025 performance
Revenue reached EUR 20.9bn in 2025, up 3%, making the passenger business the engine of a group whose overall revenue was flat at EUR 43.0bn. TGV services carried 168 million passengers in France and abroad, an increase of 3.5%.
Regional and suburban traffic grew as well, by 2.8% on TER and 4.0% on Transilien. Intercités carried close to 12 million passengers across nine daytime and three overnight lines serving more than 150 destinations. Punctuality was 86.6% on TGV, 91.4% on TER and 90.5% on Transilien.
Competition arrives from both directions
As a railway undertaking in a fully opened market, the company faces open-access entrants on its commercial routes and competitive tendering on its contracted ones. Neither exposure existed a decade ago.
On the high-speed network the challengers are foreign incumbents. Trenitalia France entered in 2021 and Renfe followed in 2023, both targeting the highest-density corridors rather than the network as a whole.
On the contracted side, regional services once awarded automatically are now won or lost in procurement under the market rules of the 4th Railway Package. SNCF Voyageurs took four of the five rail tenders held in 2025, and has expanded abroad on the same terms — running Ouigo España since 2021 and holding the leading stake in Eurostar Group and TGV Lyria.
A fleet problem behind the growth
Demand is currently outrunning capacity. Delays in delivery of the new TGV M fleet have left the company turning passengers away at peak times on the busiest departures.
The response has been to keep existing trainsets in service longer. More than 100 high-speed trainsets are gaining an additional two to ten years through a refurbishment programme that also raises capacity per set.
The same logic applies below the high-speed network. Around 100 TER trainsets were given mid-life renovations during 2025, extending the usable life of regional stock the regions have already paid for.