Data released by China State Railway Group on October 2 showed that on October 1 -- the first day of this year's combined Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday -- the national rail network carried 25.204 million passenger trips, a new all-time high for single-day ridership, with operations running safely and smoothly. The record came on the opening day of the "Golden Week" holiday and underscored the continued surge in domestic demand for rail travel, offering a key data point for gauging overall travel enthusiasm during this year's holiday.

This year's holiday transport period began on September 23 and runs through October 8, a 16-day span created by the close alignment of the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day. China State Railway Group had earlier forecast that the railway system would carry about 284 million passenger trips over the entire holiday, running an average of roughly 13,000 passenger trains per day. According to the group's passenger transport department, because short-distance Mid-Autumn travel overlapped with longer-distance National Day travel, rail traffic was expected to remain at elevated levels throughout the holiday, with passenger flows especially concentrated on certain routes and time slots -- and October 1 was identified in advance as the overall peak day.

The actual October 1 figure not only set a record but also exceeded the railway's own forecast. China State Railway Group had projected about 24.8 million passenger trips for the day; the actual total of 25.204 million came in higher. Compared with the first day of last year's National Day holiday -- when the network carried 23.13 million passenger trips on October 1, 2025 -- this year's figure represents a clear year-on-year increase of roughly 9 percent.

Placed on a longer timeline, China's single-day rail ridership record has been broken repeatedly throughout 2026: on the first day of the New Year holiday, the national network carried 18.56 million passenger trips; by the first day of the May Day holiday, that figure had jumped to 24.844 million, a record at the time; and now the 25.204 million recorded on the first day of the National Day holiday has surpassed the May Day record again, becoming the highest single-day figure so far this year. The successive rise across the first days of the New Year, May Day and National Day holidays points to sustained, year-long growth in domestic demand for rail travel.

On the infrastructure side, the railway's ability to absorb such enormous passenger volumes during the holiday is closely linked to the continued expansion of the rail network in recent years. Figures previously released by China State Railway Group show that by the end of 2025, the national railway's operating mileage had reached 165,000 kilometers, of which high-speed rail accounted for more than 50,000 kilometers -- still the largest in the world, exceeding the combined high-speed rail mileage of all other countries. During the 2021-2025 five-year plan period, national high-speed rail mileage grew from 37,900 kilometers to 50,400 kilometers, an increase of nearly 33 percent. At a planning meeting in early 2026, the group also said the national railway aimed to put more than 2,000 kilometers of new lines into operation this year, meaning the network's scale and capacity continue to expand in tandem -- providing a foundation for the smooth handling of peak holiday passenger flows.

Notably, rail's growth stood out against a broader dip in overall cross-regional travel. According to transport authorities, total cross-regional trips across rail, road, civil aviation and waterway transport combined reached about 329.5 million on October 1, down 1.9 percent year on year; road trips alone totaled roughly 300.36 million, down 2.8 percent. In other words, even as nationwide cross-regional travel volume edged lower overall, rail ridership bucked the trend with growth of nearly 9 percent, suggesting that railways are becoming increasingly attractive for medium- and long-distance holiday travel.

To cope with the mounting pressure on capacity, railway authorities operated on a peak-season schedule throughout the holiday, coordinating both high-speed and conventional-speed capacity and repeatedly adding extra trains. On October 1 alone, 2,324 additional trains were added; for October 2, the railway forecast around 20.39 million passenger trips and scheduled 1,462 extra trains; on the single busiest day for cross-bureau extra services during the holiday, roughly 890 additional trains were added. In addition, about 700 overnight high-speed services were added on trunk lines including the Beijing-Shanghai, Beijing-Guangzhou and Beijing-Harbin routes, major hubs such as Wuhan and Nanchang moved to round-the-clock operation, extra high-speed sleeper trains were added on the Beijing-Shenzhen and Shanghai-Guangzhou corridors, and additional carriages were attached to existing services with multiple-unit trains coupled together to squeeze out extra capacity; some new lines and stations due to open soon were also factored into the holiday's capacity planning. Certain routes also ran themed special trains -- including "panda specials," "fan-club specials" for concertgoers and "sports-fan specials" -- to serve travel demand on specific routes. On ticketing, railway authorities said they would use 12306 big-data analysis to study holiday travel patterns, set ticket-sale strategies accordingly, monitor seat availability in real time and dynamically adjust allocations, while reminding passengers that tickets on popular routes and services could sell out quickly and advising them to use sale-alert and waitlist features to improve their chances of securing a ticket.

Regional railway authorities also rolled out targeted measures. The China Railway Guangzhou Group forecast it would carry 38.6 million passenger trips during this year's combined holiday, up 15.4 percent year on year, potentially breaking the historical record for the period; it used a flexible "one schedule per day" approach, adding trains, attaching extra carriages and coupling multiple-unit trains to handle fluctuating demand. The China Railway Chengdu Group forecast 27.5 million passenger trips, running an average of 1,864 passenger trains and carrying an average of 1.72 million passengers per day, while adding 207 overnight multiple-unit services on the Chengdu-Chongqing, Xi'an-Chengdu, Zhengzhou-Chongqing and Chengdu-Guiyang high-speed lines. In the Yangtze River Delta, railways forecast 54 million passenger trips for the holiday, with the peak also falling on October 1, when about 4.4 million trips were expected that day. Elsewhere, the China Railway Hohhot Group added 11 pairs of multiple-unit trains on the Baotou-Wuhai section of the Baotou-Yinchuan high-speed line, while the Taiyuan Group coordinated with local transport authorities and tourist sites to add shuttle buses to help disperse passenger flows.

As the holiday entered its second half, October 6 and 7 emerged as another peak period for return travel, echoing earlier travel peaks on September 24-25, September 27-28 and September 29-October 1, together forming a pattern of overlapping passenger surges throughout the holiday. China State Railway Group had earlier noted that during these peak periods, tickets for some popular routes and services remained relatively tight. To ease the return-travel crunch, railways continued running overnight high-speed services on the Beijing-Shanghai, Beijing-Guangzhou and Beijing-Harbin trunk lines in the early hours from October 6 through October 8, and on October 6 added extra high-speed sleeper services on routes including Beijing-Chengdu, Beijing-Guiyang, Shanghai-Yibin, and Chengdu to Shenzhen and Zhuhai, in an effort to help returning travelers get home smoothly as the holiday wound down safely.

Under the rule allowing tickets to be sold 15 days in advance, tickets for September 23 -- the first day of the holiday -- went on sale starting September 9; by 8 a.m. on September 23, China Railway's 12306 ticketing system had already sold 96.21 million tickets for the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day holiday period, reflecting how concentrated the demand for rail travel was even before the holiday officially began.

Because the holiday does not end until October 8, China State Railway Group has yet to release final ridership figures for the entire period, with the total expected to be announced officially once the holiday concludes. But based on the October 1 single-day record, the steadily climbing single-day ridership curve seen throughout this year, and the extra-train arrangements rolled out by regional railway bureaus in the days since, rail transport has continued to play a central role in China's holiday travel economy this year. For observers, this set of data not only records the travel enthusiasm of this particular holiday, but also offers a window worth watching for gauging the strength of China's domestic consumer market and shifting preferences in medium- and long-distance travel.