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Question

Activation of pass and reservations

  • April 4, 2026
  • 2 replies
  • 29 views

Hi everyone,

My name is Yessica. I will be traveling from Belgium to Madrid by train.

I would like to make my reservations before my trip because I prefer to have everything well organized, especially since I will be traveling alone (it’s my first time traveling alone 😊).

For this reason, I would like to buy the Eurail Pass now and make reservations for the trains where it is required. However, I only want to activate the pass on the day of my first trip.

My question is: if I make reservations in advance, will the pass be activated automatically before my actual travel date?

Since these are high-demand travel dates, I want to make sure I won’t have any issues finding seats.

Is it possible to make reservations and pay for them in advance without activating the pass?

Thank you very much for your help!

 

 

2 replies

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  • Full steam ahead
  • April 4, 2026

@Yesica Lesmes 

Yes, it is possible to reserve seats without activating the pass, no connection is made with it. You must always add your journey in the Rail Planner app before boarding the train, even if you have a reservation, and show both in the train.

You can find a reservations guide here:

https://www.seat61.com/interrail-and-eurail-reservations.htm


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  • Railly clever
  • April 4, 2026

Actually, you should not activate the pass before the day of your first travel.

If you activate the pass in advance and then for some reason you can't travel, then the pass only can be deactivated until midnight the day before the start of the validity of the pass.