DiscoverEU: 40,000 free Interrail passes, and you can apply as a group of five

If you were born in 2008, the European Union will pay for you to travel around Europe by train. Not a discount. The pass itself, plus a card that gets you money off food, museums and accommodation along the way.

It is called DiscoverEU, it happens once or twice a year, and this round closes on 15 October 2026 at 12:00 midday, Brussels time. There is no extension.

Most people who qualify never hear about it. And of those who do, almost nobody knows the rule that makes it far more interesting: you can apply as a group of up to five people.

What you actually get

Around 40,000 travel passes are being awarded in this round, with a budget of €23.5 million. Each pass covers:

• Seven days of train travel, which you choose within a window of up to 30 days.
• Travel anywhere in the participating countries, mostly by rail.
• A discount card with offers on transport, accommodation, food, culture and sports in the

countries you visit.

That seven-days detail trips people up, so it is worth being precise: it is not thirty days of unlimited travel. It is seven travel days inside a period of up to thirty. You pick a month, and within it you have a week of journeys. Plenty for four or five cities if you plan the hops.

You travel between 1 March 2027 and 31 May 2028, so there is time to organise it properly.

Who can apply

Two conditions, and both are strict:

1. You turn 18 during 2026. In the EU's words, you must have been born between

1 January 2008 and 31 December 2008, both included. A day either side and you are out.

1. You are a citizen or resident of one of the 27 EU Member States (including its overseas

territories) or of a country associated to the Erasmus+ programme: Iceland, Liechtenstein, North Macedonia, Norway, Serbia or Türkiye.

The United Kingdom is not on the list. Since Brexit the UK is no longer part of Erasmus+, so living in the UK does not make you eligible. A British citizen who lives in an EU country can apply as a resident of that country; someone who lives in the UK cannot, unless they also hold the citizenship of an eligible country.

Beyond that, there is nothing else. You do not need to be a student, a grant, a certain income or any qualification.

The rule almost nobody knows: apply as a group

When you fill in the application, it asks whether you want to travel alone or in a group of up to five people.

This matters more than it sounds:

• Only one person in the group fills in the quiz. The others are added to the application.
• You do not have to live in the same city, or even the same country.
• If the application is selected, the whole group travels.

So five friends scattered across Europe after school can still go together. And a group of five splitting accommodation is a very different trip, financially, from going alone with a free rail pass and paying for single rooms.

How to apply, step by step

1. Go to the European Youth Portal and find the DiscoverEU call for applications. The "Apply

Now" button appears on that page while the round is open.

1. Fill in your personal details, including your ID or passport number.
2. Answer a quiz of five multiple-choice questions about the European Union and other EU

initiatives for young people, plus a tie-breaker question.

1. Say whether you are travelling alone or in a group, and add the others if so.
2. Submit before 15 October 2026, 12:00 Brussels time.

One condition worth knowing before you start: applicants have to agree to become DiscoverEU Ambassadors, which means sharing your experience afterwards. It is not onerous, but it is in the rules.

If you do not get one

Places are limited and allocated by country quota, so plenty of good applications are turned down. Two things are worth knowing:

The round runs roughly twice a year, but you can only apply in the year you turn 18. So if you were born in 2008, this October and the next round are your only chances. It is not a train you can catch later.

And an Interrail pass bought privately is not out of reach either — but that is a different article.

What this has to do with us

We build TravelMatch, an app for finding who to travel with and organising the trip together. We are writing about DiscoverEU because it is useful and because it closes in days, not because it has anything to do with our app.

But there is one honest overlap. The group rule above assumes you already have four people who want to go. Plenty of eighteen-year-olds do not — friends have jobs, or exams, or no money that year. If that is you, finding the other four is its own problem, and it is the one we work on.

Sources. All figures here come from the official DiscoverEU rules and call for applications on the European Youth Portal (`youth.europa.eu/discovereu`), checked on 4 October 2026: 40,000 passes, €23.5 million budget, birth dates of 1 January to 31 December 2008, seven travel days within a period of up to 30, travel window 1 March 2027 to 31 May 2028, groups of maximum five, and the closing date of 15 October 2026 at 12:00 Brussels time.

Dates change between rounds. If you are reading this after October 2026, check the portal before relying on anything above.