High-speed route
ICE Sprinter
Berlin → Munich · Germany
ICE Sprinter in pictures
Photographs by their authors, hosted on Wikimedia Commons · tap through for the licence
- Distance
- 623 km
- Fastest time
- 3 h 55 min
- Average speed
- 159 km/h
- Top speed
- 300 km/h
- Operator
- Deutsche Bahn
- Train
- ICE 3
- Countries
- Germany
- In service since
- 2017
- Runs
- hourly Sprinters (16× daily each way)
- Riders per year
- ≈ 5M
Figures are published values, not live data · corrections log
The €10bn VDE 8 project: 26 tunnels and 37 viaducts through the Thuringian Forest halved the Berlin–Munich journey.
For most of a century the Berlin–Munich run meandered; reunified Germany’s flagship rail project rebuilt it as a near-straight ribbon of slab track. The Sprinter leaves the capital across flat Saxon-Anhalt plains, calls at Erfurt’s cathedral city, then dives into the tunnel chain beneath the Thuringian Forest, riding high concrete spans over wooded valleys. Since December 2025 the fast trains have run hourly, and Franconia and the Danube at Ingolstadt flash past almost unnoticed on the final descent to Munich.
How this line was checked
- Line drawn from OpenStreetMap relation 7796142 — the same nodes OpenStreetMap holds for this railway, thinned to within under 25 m of them
- Checked against OpenStreetMap: the whole line lies on real track, a median 7 m from it
- Checked against the running timetable via ÖBB Scotty: our line sits 0.2 km from the shape of ICE 1503
- Wikipedia has an article for this line
Along the way
- Brandenburg heath out of Berlin
- Erfurt’s medieval skyline
- Thuringian Forest tunnel chain
- Nuremberg old town interchange
- Danube crossing at Ingolstadt
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Planning this trip? Journey time & direct trains: Berlin → Munich · Munich → Berlin.