IRCTC Breaks Records: Handling 20 Lakh Daily Train Bookings During Festive Rush
Public Lokpal
September 11, 2026
IRCTC Breaks Records: Handling 20 Lakh Daily Train Bookings During Festive Rush
Indian Railways’ e-ticketing arm, IRCTC, recently set a historic milestone by processing over 20 lakh train ticket bookings in a single day, fueled by massive festive advance reservations for Diwali and Chhath.
To manage this unprecedented surge, IRCTC deployed advanced infrastructural upgrades to its Next-Generation eTicketing (NGeT) system, optimized high-capacity payment gateways, and utilized load balancing between the Rail Connect app and web portal. Indian Railways also introduced hundreds of festival special trains on high-demand routes like Delhi-Patna to diffuse crowd pressure and distribute booking traffic across wider windows.
Despite these technological enhancements—including streamlined UPI integrations to reduce transaction bottlenecks—the staggering volume of concurrent users frequently pushes servers to their limits, resulting in brief, localized slowdowns during peak morning booking hours.