The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) recorded its highest-ever single-day ticket booking of over two million on September 7 amid festive season demand, it said on Thursday.
IRCTC said 20,06,353 tickets were booked on September 7, surpassing the previous peak of 18,40,203 during last year’s festive season. The system handled another 19,50,699 bookings on September 8.
“About 89% of all reserved railway tickets are currently booked online, making the capacity and reliability of IRCTC’s Next Generation e-Ticketing (NGeT) system increasingly critical, particularly during the opening of the Advance Reservation Period (ARP). As per the present trend, only 8.43%-14.14% of the day’s bookings are completed during the first hour (8–9am), and over 85% of bookings are completed successfully later in the day. The first 15 minutes (8-8:15am) consistently record the highest booking volume, reflecting peak concurrent demand,” said an IRCTC official.
The record booking volumes were achieved after a series of upgrades to the ticketing system. These include an overhaul of the NGeT infrastructure, introduction of a new user interface, and measures to prevent automated bot traffic and reduce pressure on the booking system.
IRCTC officials said that the overall system capacity has been increased to approximately twice its earlier level. A beta version of IRCTC’s redesigned user interface was introduced on July 15, providing a more streamlined booking experience and displaying availability across different classes, including Sleeper, AC 3 Tier and AC 2 Tier, on a single screen.
{{/usCountry}}IRCTC officials said that the overall system capacity has been increased to approximately twice its earlier level. A beta version of IRCTC’s redesigned user interface was introduced on July 15, providing a more streamlined booking experience and displaying availability across different classes, including Sleeper, AC 3 Tier and AC 2 Tier, on a single screen.
{{/usCountry}}The railways introduced anti-bot and Content Delivery Network capabilities to reduce malicious automated traffic by 55% to 65% in recent months. To ensure a level playing field during the opening reservation window, authorised ticketing agents are barred from booking ARP tickets during the first 10 minutes, between 8am and 8.10am.
“Aadhaar-authenticated users have also been allowed to book during the opening ARP window since October 2025. The NGeT now handles between 13.3 million and 17.4 million log ins and 1.7 million to two million bookings on each ARP opening day,” said a second IRCTC official.
The corporation said that despite exceptionally high concurrent demand, there has been no failure or outage of the NGeT platform. It added that action against misuse had resulted in 3.04 million user IDs being deactivated and 63.3 million IDs being placed under revalidation. As many as 16,041 suspicious email domains have also been blocked to ensure genuine users.