Campania Express: Suspended from 1 October 2026 (Refunds and Alternatives)

What EAV announced

In the second week of August 2026 EAV, the regional operator that runs the Circumvesuviana, said it would suspend the Campania Express from 1 October 2026 until further notice. The reasoning given was that the company would rather concentrate its rolling stock on ordinary commuter services than run trains for a narrow group of travellers.

That is an open-ended suspension, not a seasonal timetable change. There is no announced restart, and nothing in the announcement suggests a spring return. Plan the autumn and winter without it.

The reason this catches people out is that EAV's own service pages, the two campaniaexpress domains and every travel guide ranking for the term still describe a train that runs. They were written before the announcement and none has been updated.

Eight runs a day, seven stops

The Campania Express ran eight times a day, including holidays, between Napoli Porta Nolana and Sorrento, calling at Ercolano Scavi, Pompei Scavi, Castellammare di Stabia, Vico Equense, Meta, Piano di Sorrento and Sant'Agnello. In practice it existed for two journeys: Naples to the ruins, and Naples to the Sorrentine peninsula.

On the EAV L1 timetable in force from 28 March 2026 it appears as the columns marked EXP. From 1 October those columns stop existing, and the printed sheet on the station wall will be describing services that do not run.

The eight services being withdrawn

Every Campania Express run that touches the Sorrento line, taken from the EAV L1 timetable. Southbound times are the departure from Sorrento; northbound times are the call at Pompei Scavi on the way back up to Naples. All eight stop on 1 October 2026.

Bought from EAV

Tickets held for travel after 30 September 2026 are refunded through the complaints form in the reclami section of EAV's own site. Submit the form quoting the alphanumeric code printed on the ticket — that code is what identifies the booking, not your name or the date.

There is no counter refund and no automatic reversal; the form is the route.

Bought through a reseller

If you bought through Omio, Distribusion or another third-party channel, EAV directs you back to that seller. Request the refund through the same account and order you used to buy, not through EAV, and expect the reseller's own processing time rather than the railway's.

Either way, do it rather than waiting: an open-ended suspension is not the same as a cancellation that reverses itself.

Sorrento to Pompeii: barely a loss

On this stretch the ordinary Circumvesuviana does everything the Express did. The journey is 39 to 40 minutes either way, the fare is €2.80 on band AC3 rather than the ordinary fare plus a supplement, and services run roughly every 36 minutes instead of eight times a day. The first is at 05:30 and the last arrival back in Sorrento is 23:18.

The 08:14 out and 18:13 back is the pair worth catching: at the gate at 08:53, seven minutes before opening, and home before dinner. What you give up is a guaranteed seat and reliable air conditioning, which on an August afternoon coming back from the ruins is a real loss and on a March morning is none at all.

Naples to Sorrento: a bigger loss

Over the full length of the line — an hour of stops through the eastern suburbs of Naples with luggage — the Express earned its supplement. The ordinary Circumvesuviana on that run is crowded, hot in summer and awkward with a suitcase, and from October there is no comfortable rail alternative.

The replacements are the Curreri coach from Naples airport, the SITA services along the coast, and the private transfer market, none of which this site sells or compares. If Pompeii is the reason you are travelling, the simpler answer is to sleep in Sorrento and treat the ruins as a forty-minute day trip.

If you wanted air conditioning to the ruins

The coach and van tours on this site now hold that ground by default. The half-day with hotel pickup collects you at your hotel, drives the SS145 in forty minutes and gives you two and a half guided hours; the small-group van caps the group at twenty. Neither is competing with the train on price — doing the day alone is about €25.60 — but from October they are competing on comfort, which they were not before.

Rolling stock, not rails

EAV's stated reasoning is that the company would rather put its serviceable trains onto ordinary commuter runs than reserve them for a premium tourist service. The Circumvesuviana carries tens of thousands of daily commuters between Naples and the towns along the bay, on a network that has spent years short of working stock, and the Campania Express took eight paths a day out of that pool.

Read that way, the decision is a straightforward reallocation: the same trains, on the same rails, carrying different people. It also means the suspension will last as long as the shortage does, which is why no restart date was given.

The knock-on for visitors

For anyone staying in Sorrento the practical effect is small, and this page has said so plainly: the ordinary train covers the Pompeii run in the same forty minutes for €2.80. The same is true of Herculaneum, which is one stop further up the line at Ercolano Scavi, about twenty-five minutes beyond Pompei Scavi — a journey the Express also served, and one the ordinary Circumvesuviana serves just as directly. If you were planning both Roman towns in a day, nothing about that plan changes.

The visitors who lose most are the ones arriving from Naples with luggage on a hot afternoon, and the day-trippers who were coming down from the city rather than out from the peninsula. For them the calculation now favours either a coach tour with its own vehicle or, more sensibly, moving the base: from a Sorrento hotel the ruins are a short local journey rather than an expedition, which is the argument this whole site is built on.

Read the transport line

The Herculaneum tour from Sorrento describes its transport as "round-trip transportation by express train or air-conditioned minibus". The express train half of that promise is the Campania Express. For any date after 30 September the tour will run by minibus — which is a perfectly good vehicle, and arguably better with the Express gone, but it is not what the listing implies.

The rest of the tours compared here use their own coaches and vans, or the ordinary Circumvesuviana, and change nothing. If a listing you are reading elsewhere sells the Campania Express as a feature, that listing is out of date.