Barcelona 🇪🇸

Yes, on TMB's metro and on TMB's own city bus fleet, but not on the trams, the trains, the cable car or the coaches. TMB, the company that runs both, takes a Visa, Mastercard or American Express contactless card in any format — card, phone or watch. On the metro you hold it against the entry gate and there is no tap out; on a TMB bus you tap the bank-card reader beside the driver's cab as you get on. The Montjuïc funicular runs as a metro line and works the same way at its gates. One tap buys and validates one single journey at the ordinary €2.90 one-zone fare, with no premium for paying that way and no running total behind it.

The airport is the exception on the metro. L9 Sud serves Aeroport T1 and T2, and those two stations charge their own Bitllet Aeroport at €5.90, a separate ticket outside the zone system. TMB issues it on T-mobilitat only — a personalised card, an anonymous card, or a phone with NFC, which you hold to the reader like a card — and a bank card is not among them, so the first metro of the trip is the one your own card cannot pay for.

The TRAM trams take no tap: TRAM's own list of valid titles carries no bank card and its rules tell you to buy before you step aboard. Nor do FGC's trains, FGC's Funicular de Vallvidrera or the Montserrat rack railway, nor Rodalies' commuter trains. The Telefèric de Montjuïc cable car has nothing to tap or stamp at all — you buy a ticket and show it. Nor is there anything to tap on the coaches — Aerobús, Bus Garraf, Empresa Plana, Sagalés and Monbus. The Aerobús ticket machines take a card and hand you a ticket, and Sagalés and Monbus take a card when you buy online.

AMB's metropolitan buses are the one thing left open: every dated announcement of Barcelona's onboard bank-card readers names TMB's fleet and no other, and AMB claims no card acceptance of its own, so treat an AMB reader as something to check at the door rather than count on. Its driver does take coins, and it does take T-mobilitat — which is how you settle the rest of this. Tap the bank card for the metro, a TMB bus and the Montjuïc funicular; buy a T-mobilitat card at any station machine for the tram, FGC's and Rodalies' trains, AMB's buses and the Bus Garraf and Empresa Plana coaches; and let the Aerobús, Sagalés, Monbus and the cable car each sell you their own ticket.

Yes, on every metro line except the airport branch. TMB takes a Visa, Mastercard or American Express contactless card, phone or watch at the entry gates: hold it against the contactless icon as you go in, and that one tap both buys and validates a single journey at the ordinary €2.90 one-zone fare. There is no tap out, so nothing can go wrong at the far end, and nothing accrues — each tap is a separate purchase at the same price. The Montjuïc funicular runs as metro line FM through the same gates and works identically.

The exception is L9 Sud, the line that serves Aeroport T1 and T2. Those two stations charge their own Bitllet Aeroport, €5.90 and outside the zone system, and TMB issues it on a T-mobilitat card only — the personalised card, the anonymous card, or a mobile with NFC, which is listed as coming. Your bank card will not open that barrier. Buy the airport ticket on a T-mobilitat card at the machine before the gate, and tap the bank card at every other station on the network.

On TMB's buses, yes. Every TMB bus carries a fixed EMV reader beside the driver's cab: tap a Visa, Mastercard or American Express contactless card, phone or watch on it as you board and it buys and validates your single ticket in one movement, at the ordinary €2.90 one-zone fare. There is no tap out, and the reader is the whole transaction — a TMB bus takes no coins and no notes, and the driver sells nothing.

AMB's metropolitan buses are the other bus network here, and they are not covered by that. Every dated announcement of Barcelona's onboard bank-card readers names TMB's fleet and no other, and AMB claims no card acceptance of its own, so whether an AMB reader would take your bank card is not established — do not board one counting on a tap. What an AMB bus does take is a T-mobilitat card, and coins from the driver.

So tap freely on a TMB bus, and if the route you want is an AMB one, buy a T-mobilitat card at any metro station machine first and validate that on board instead.

The T-mobilitat is the card every ticket in the Barcelona area now sits on, and yes, a visitor needs one: the plain single ticket is issued on T-mobilitat cardboard rather than as a printed slip, so buying a ride here means buying the card first. What you do not do is load it with credit. Every product on it is a flat, pre-purchased title — T-Casual is 10 discrete journeys, T-usual, T-jove and T-dia are unlimited travel inside a fixed period counted from your first validation, T-familiar and T-grup are a pool of 8 or 70 shared journeys inside 30 days — and none of them accrues or caps.

It comes in three forms and only one of them suits a short trip. The anonymous cardboard card is €1, or €1 folded into your first single ticket, sold instantly at any machine with no registration and no ID. The personalised plastic card is €4.50 and has to be registered — a foreign passport can be attached by hand, but delivery takes about 10 days, which rules it out for most visits. A virtual card inside the TMB App, ATM's own T-mobilitat app or FGC T-mobilitat costs €1, needs NFC with Android 7 or later or iOS 17.4 or later, and carries everything except the T-dia.

It rides the metro, the trams, FGC's and Rodalies' trains, TMB's and AMB's buses, the Montjuïc funicular and the Bus Garraf and Empresa Plana coaches, and it is the only thing that pays for the L9 Sud airport ticket. It is not accepted on the Telefèric de Montjuïc, on the Aerobús, on Sagalés or on Monbus. Buy the cardboard one at the first machine you pass, with your first ticket on it, and top it up afterwards in the app, at a machine, or at any of the thousand-plus shops across the area that sell them.

No, and not in a way a different card would fix. Nothing in Barcelona accrues towards a ceiling. Tapping a contactless bank card buys exactly one single journey each time, at the ordinary €2.90 fare with no premium for paying that way and no running total behind it.

The T-mobilitat titles are not a purse either. Every one of them is a flat, pre-purchased product: T-Casual is 10 discrete journeys, T-usual, T-jove and T-dia are unlimited travel inside a fixed period that starts at your first validation, and T-familiar and T-grup are a fixed pool of 8 or 70 shared journeys inside 30 days. You buy the ceiling in advance here rather than earning it during the day.

Which means the decision is made before you start, not after. If one day is going to be busy, buy the T-dia and stop counting; if you are spreading journeys across a few days, the T-Casual's ten is usually the cheaper shape. Either sits on a T-mobilitat card bought at any metro machine, €1 for the cardboard one — and the T-dia is the one title that cannot go on your phone.

On TMB's readers, yes. TMB, the company that runs Barcelona's metro and city buses, accepts Visa, Mastercard and American Express in any format - card, mobile or watch - and the page that says so puts no condition on the issuing bank or the country. It does not promise the opposite either, so the honest test is the scheme printed on the front of your card: a card your own bank blocks abroad fails for that reason rather than for anything Barcelona decided.

Where that tap works is narrower than it sounds. You tap at the metro entry gates, at the reader in front of the driver's cab on a TMB bus, and on the Montjuïc funicular, which runs as a metro line. It is not how you pay on FGC's trains, its Vallvidrera funicular or the Montserrat rack railway, nor on Rodalies, nor on the TRAM network, nor on the Aerobús, nor on the Montjuïc cable car, whose tickets are bought in advance and shown rather than tapped. Whether AMB's metropolitan buses take a bank card is not settled here, so carry another way to pay if you board one.

The one that catches travellers out is the airport. The metro line to Aeroport T1 and T2 is L9 Sud, and its airport ticket is sold on T-mobilitat cards only - the personalised card, the anonymous card, and a mobile with NFC that is listed as coming. A bank-card tap is not among them, so the first ride of the trip is the one your own card cannot pay for. Get the airport ticket onto a T-mobilitat card before you go through the barrier, and keep the bank card for the metro and the buses in town.

Almost everywhere in Barcelona it is a minimum charge (percepció mínima) of €100, and almost everywhere it halves to €50 if you pay quickly. TMB (the metro, the city buses and the Montjuïc funicular), TRAM, FGC and Rodalies all charge the same €100, and the same €100 applies on the integrated tickets. What differs is how long you have, and that is the part worth reading.

TMB and TRAM give you the reduced €50 on the spot or within 2 working days, after which TMB allows a formal appeal and gives you 30 days to pay the full €100 before the file leaves the operator. Rodalies gives the same €50 immediately — but only in cash — or within 2 working days at any point of sale or the Renfe customer centre at Plaça de Catalunya, with 30 days as the outer deadline for the full amount. FGC publishes only 'immediate' payment for its 50% reduction and no day count at all. Sagalés coaches charge the same €100, halved to €50 if you pay immediately.

AMB's metropolitan buses are a different regime entirely, and not the cheap one the headline figure suggests: €30.05 is only the bottom of a graduated range in AMB's own passenger regulation, which climbs with the harm caused, the risk created, intent and repetition to a ceiling of nearly three times the €100 charged everywhere else. AMB publishes no early-payment reduction and no payment window.

Most of what catches a visitor is a second validation nobody mentioned. On the tram you validate on board every time, and a single ticket has to be validated again at each transfer inside its 30 minutes. If you validated an integrated ticket at the start of your journey on another tram or another mode and only miss the validation as you board the tram, you are charged the price of a one-zone single; if you never validated it at all, it is the full €100. On Rodalies you validate before boarding and again when you change between Rodalies lines; miss only the change and you pay that same one-zone charge. On FGC you tap in, and where the station has a machine at the exit that checks your ticket you tap out too — miss it and you are treated as having no ticket. So validate at every boarding and keep the card, and if a notice is written on TMB, TRAM or Rodalies, pay it inside 2 working days for the €50.

Which service you can take depends on the terminal you land at, and so does what you are allowed to pay with. Rodalies R2 Nord calls at Terminal 2 only — there is no railway station at Terminal 1 — and reaches the centre in about 20 minutes. It takes a T-mobilitat card, a ticket bought in the Rodalies app or an operator's app, or a bitllet senzill from a machine. It does not take a contactless bank card: tapping is simply not how this train is paid for.

Metro line L9 Sud reaches both terminals and sells its own separate ticket, the Bitllet Aeroport, €5.90 for one person and one journey. It sits deliberately outside the zone system: once validated it lasts only until you leave the metro, so it buys no transfer onto a bus or a tram, and L9 Sud does not reach the centre on its own — you change lines and that continuation is on you. It has to sit on a T-mobilitat card, and a bank card is not accepted at the airport barrier either.

The Aerobús runs the A1 from Terminal 1 and the A2 from Terminal 2 on its own ticketing rather than the city's: €7.75 one way, €13.30 return, valid 90 days from purchase, children under 4 free, and a combined Metro and bus plus Aerobús single at €10.15. You buy it as a QR code in its app, at the stop, or from the driver, who takes coins. TMB's ordinary bus 46 serves both terminals at the plain city fare with no airport supplement of any kind. After hours the night buses take over, and which one you can catch depends on where you land: the N17 calls at Terminal 1 only, while the N18 serves both. Bus 46 ends at Plaça Espanya and leaves you a metro leg short of the centre; the night buses run in to Plaça de Catalunya. On all three a tap on a contactless bank card pays your fare, which is not true of the R2 train or the L9 Sud airport ticket. A taxi from the rank opposite arrivals adds a fixed airport supplement to the meter and takes cash or a card.

So choose in the terminal, not at the platform: from T2 the R2 train with a ticket bought at the machine first; from T1 bus 46 if you are counting money and the Aerobús if you are not.

Cash works at the machines and on most buses, but not on the buses you are likeliest to board. TMB's Barcelona city buses take no coins and no notes at all — the only thing on board is the reader beside the driver's cab, which sells and validates a single ticket in one tap. AMB's metropolitan buses do take coins from the driver, and so does any other bus in the integrated fare area whose operator has not switched on card payment; whether any of them takes a note is not published.

Machines are the dependable place for cash. Every TMB metro station machine takes coins and notes, and TMB has said it will keep cash payment at all of them under the legal right to pay in cash. So do FGC's station machines, the four Punt TMB counters inside metro stations and FGC's customer centres. The Rodalies machines take coins, but whether they take a banknote is not published, so do not walk up to one holding only a note. What you get back is not a paper ticket but a T-mobilitat card with the fare loaded on it: the single ticket is issued on T-mobilitat cardboard now, €1 for the card, added to your first purchase.

Two smaller traps. A TRAM tram takes coins from the driver and no notes whatever. The Telefèric de Montjuïc cable car takes cash at its ticket offices for the one-way ticket, and the coach operators — Aerobús, Bus Garraf, Empresa Plana, Sagalés and Monbus — take cash on board. Sagalés and the Aerobús will take a banknote on board, but each caps how large a one it will change; for Bus Garraf, Empresa Plana and Monbus what a driver does with a note is not something this page can give you. So carry coins, and buy your card with notes at a metro machine on the first day rather than discovering a TMB driver cannot take your money.

On some of them, and not on TMB's. A TMB city bus takes no cash at all and has no driver sale: the reader beside the driver's cab takes a contactless bank card or a T-mobilitat card and nothing else. On AMB's metropolitan buses the driver does take coins and gives you a single ticket — but whether an AMB bus takes a bank card instead is not recorded either way, so do not board one counting on a tap. Any other bus in the integrated area whose operator has not switched on card payment takes coins from the driver too. What none of them publishes is whether a note is accepted.

So stop planning around the driver. Buy a T-mobilitat card with coins or notes at any metro station machine — €1 for the cardboard one, folded into your first ticket — load a single or a T-Casual onto it, and validate it on board every bus you get on.

Yes, but which app depends entirely on who runs the service. The TMB App holds the city's own titles as a virtual T-mobilitat card that you hold against the reader at a metro gate or on a TMB bus. The app is free, the €1 mobile support is charged automatically with the first title you load, and you pay by Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay, Google Pay or Bizum. Two limits matter before you rely on it: the T-dia day ticket cannot live on a phone, and the virtual card needs NFC with Android 7 or later or iOS 17.4 or later — an iPhone bought outside the EU cannot be set up before you arrive.

Rodalies sells its own tickets inside the Rodalies app, held as a QR code that refreshes on the screen. The Aerobús sells a QR ticket in its app or on aerobusbarcelona.es which the driver or the stop assistant scans as you board, with no separate validation step; Monbus and the Telefèric de Montjuïc sell the same kind of ticket for their own rides. Bought as a combined Aerobús and Hola Barcelona ticket, it also carries a 13-digit voucher code you redeem at any metro vending machine for the travel card itself.

Nothing else here sells a ticket to a phone. FGC, TRAM, AMB's buses, Bus Garraf and Empresa Plana all record none, so on those a phone is only useful as a T-mobilitat card. Set the TMB App up and load your first title before you fly — a phone that turns out not to be compatible is a bad thing to discover at a metro gate.

Maybe one - ask before you count on it. All 6 discounts in Barcelona either need something you sign up for locally - an address here - or leave open whether a visitor can hold them. Plan on the standard fare, and ask at a ticket office if you think one of them applies to you.

Almost every reduction here is built for people who live in the area. The Targeta Rosa asks you to be registered as a resident of a metropolitan municipality. T-16 is for a resident child and wants the family record book. The family and unemployment prices run off official Spanish paperwork held in a personal account. T-jove, €45.50 for 90 consecutive days of unlimited travel across every zone for anyone under 30, sets out no residency rule of its own, and a passport is accepted to register the personal T-mobilitat card it needs, so a visitor may well qualify. It is personal to its holder, and it can be loaded onto a registered plastic card or onto a phone with NFC through a T-mobilitat app. If you are under 30, ask at an FGC customer service centre or a T-mobilitat Care and Information Centre whether you can register for it.

Fares yes; journey times only for airports. Fares, caps and penalties are printed where an operator publishes them, with the source beside each figure. Journey times appear only on the airport pages, as the rough time from the airport to the centre where one is published; there are no timetables here. For a live departure or a door-to-door route, use the operator's own journey planner.