Germany's national rail operator Deutsche Bahn halted all train services nationwide late on June 23 due to a failure in the GSM-R (Global System for Mobile Communications – Railway) digital radio communication system, which is the primary tool for communication between train drivers and traffic control centers across Europe [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7].
All trains were held at stations and prevented from departing, leaving many passengers stranded across the country [1, 3, 5, 8, 7]. Metronom, a private regional operator in northern Germany, also stopped services, affecting over 120,000 daily passengers [7].
Technicians worked intensively overnight and managed to largely restore services by early June 24, with trains gradually resuming but delays and cancellations continuing in some regions [9, 8, 7]. Deutsche Bahn CEO Evelyn Palla said, "We were able to stabilise the situation using an emergency system. We now need to determine the cause," while also confirming efforts to get trains into stations to allow travelers to disembark [9, 5]. A Deutsche Bahn spokesperson added, "Technicians are working flat out to resolve the issue." [1]
The cause was identified as a failure arising during a scheduled maintenance attempt to replace an aging component of the GSM-R system—technology dating from the 1990s and based on 2G networks [9, 10]. While sabotage speculation was dismissed, the exact cause remains under investigation, with Deutsche Bahn InfraGO CEO Philipp Nagl saying, "We are analysing the exact cause of the disruption meticulously and with the highest priority, to ensure that the same problem can’t recur." [3, 9, 10, 5, 7]
Some sources suggested a faulty software update or hardware replacement could have triggered the outage [9]. Initial fears it was a cyber-attack were considered unlikely after further analysis [1, 3, 10, 5].
The outage came amid longstanding challenges in Germany’s rail system, including underinvestment, frequent delays, and capacity limitations, factors that increase vulnerability to disruptions [10, 8, 7]. In February 2026, punctuality for long-distance trains was at 59%, down from 66% a year earlier [10].
Deutsche Bahn apologized to passengers and has provided taxi and hotel vouchers where possible. It has pledged to investigate the failure to prevent future incidents [3, 4, 10, 5]. Armand Zorn, deputy caucus leader for the Social Democrats, said, "The nationwide failure of the train radio system demonstrates once again just how vulnerable parts of our critical infrastructure are. Security agencies, the railway operator and the transport ministry must immediately identify the cause and promptly improve system security." [9]
Metronom warned passengers not to travel by train on June 24, saying, "We believe there will be no further train operations tonight." [7]
Services continued to resume gradually during the day on June 24, but some delays and cancellations remained as repairs and system checks proceeded [9, 8, 7].
