Prague Airport Is on Track for the Busiest Year It Has Ever Had

Václav Havel Airport Prague expects to handle about 18.6 million passengers in 2026, which would be a new record and growth of more than 5 percent on last year, according to aviation network publication Air Service One. Over the past 12 months, 11 new airlines have started flying to Prague, carriers have announced 33 new destinations, and more than 20 further routes have been added to cities the airport already served. Airlines have also increased capacity or frequencies on more than 40 existing routes, a broad-based expansion rather than growth concentrated in a single carrier.

Links to Asia are a big part of the story. STARLUX Airlines began nonstop flights between Taipei and Prague on August 1, and Vietjet was scheduled to start Hanoi service on October 10, with both carriers choosing the Czech capital as their first European destination. American Airlines resumed its Philadelphia nonstop this year, Air Arabia’s Sharjah route returned and Saudi low-cost carrier flyadeal started seasonal flights to Riyadh and Jeddah. Together those give Czech travellers and inbound tourists more one-stop options across Asia, the Middle East and North America.

Short-haul growth is led by Wizz Air, which has added 13 new routes from Prague including Iasi, Palermo, Poprad-Tatry, Skopje, Sarajevo, Turin and Yerevan. Ryanair is adding Palermo and Turin, Smartwings added Bergen and Venice from October, and easyJet is adding Hamburg and Lille. Winter additions include SkyAlps to Bolzano, Eurowings to Rovaniemi in Finnish Lapland and Fly2Galicia to Santiago de Compostela, giving Czech travellers new options for Dolomites ski trips, Arctic getaways and pilgrim-route breaks this season.

The airport has also named its priorities for future growth, with Shanghai at the top of its wish list for China, alongside a direct link to India via Delhi or Mumbai, a return of seasonal Montreal service and new US routes from Newark, Chicago and Boston. Tbilisi, Billund and Ljubljana are named as European targets. None of those routes have been confirmed, but the list gives a clear sense of where Prague hopes to go next, and for visitors the current expansion already means more ways to reach one of Central Europe’s most visited cities.

Sources: Air Service One, Prague Airport