How to Get to Kazan and Get Around: Airport, Trains, Metro and Boats

Located roughly 800 kilometres east of Moscow on the middle Volga, Kazan serves as the primary aviation, rail, highway, and inland waterway hub of the Volga Federal District. Modernised ahead of the 2005 millennium celebrations, the 2013 Summer Universiade, and the 2018 FIFA World Cup, the city's transport terminals connect directly to the historic centre.

Arriving by Air at Ğabdulla Tuqay Kazan International Airport (KZN)

Ğabdulla Tuqay Kazan International Airport (IATA code KZN, named in 2019 after national Tatar poet Ğabdulla Tuqay) sits 25 to 26 kilometres southeast of central Kazan and handled 5.4 million passengers in 2025 across its 3,700-metre runway and passenger terminals (Terminal 1, Terminal 1A, and domestic expansions). Direct domestic flights link KZN multiple times daily with Moscow's Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo, and Vnukovo airports (flight time around ninety minutes) and Saint Petersburg's Pulkovo Airport, alongside international services to Istanbul, Dubai, Antalya, Tashkent, Almaty, and Minsk. From the airport terminal, electric commuter trains run directly along a dedicated rail link to the central Kazan-Passazhirskaya Railway Station in approximately 25 to 30 minutes, while municipal bus route 97 connects the airport to Prospekt Pobedy Metro Station and official taxis reach Bauman Street in thirty to forty minutes.

Arriving by Train at Kazan-Passazhirskaya and Kazan-2

Kazan has two main long-distance railway terminals:

• Kazan-Passazhirskaya (Kazan-1, Privokzalnaya Square): Located in the historic centre a ten-minute walk west of Bauman Street and the Bolaq channel, the main station is anchored by its landmark 1896 red-brick terminal building (opened shortly after the Moscow to Kazan railway was completed in 1893, restored in 1997 after a 1992 fire, and modernised in 2005 and 2013). Serving more than 8 million passengers annually on long-distance and suburban trains, it receives overnight trains, including double-deck services, from Moscow's Kazansky Railway Terminal in about eleven to twelve hours.
• Kazan-2 (Vosstaniye-Passazhirskaya): Situated in the northern part of the city directly above Severny Vokzal Metro Station, this transit rail and intercity bus hub handles through-trains running between Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Yekaterinburg, and Siberia.

Volga River Port and Summer Waterway Connections

At the western end of Tatarstan Street on the bank of the Kuybyshev Reservoir stands the Kazan River Port, the main passenger terminal for river boats in Kazan. From May through September, high-speed hydrofoils and displacement passenger boats depart daily from its piers for the UNESCO island fortress of Sviyazhsk and the medieval ruins of Bolgar, while multi-day Volga cruise ships call here on voyages between Moscow, Nizhny Novgorod, Samara, and Astrakhan.

Riding the Kazan Metro, Red Buses, Trams and Trolleybuses

Opened on 27 August 2005 as the seventh metro system in Russia and the first built in the country after the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the single-line Kazan Metro runs nearly 16 kilometres across 11 stations from Aviastroitelnaya in the north to Dubravnaya in the southeast. For visitors, four central stations cover the main sights: Kozya Sloboda (for the Kazan Family Center), Kremlyovskaya (at the foot of the Kazan Kremlin, decorated with a winged Zilant dragon ceiling mosaic), Ploshchad Tukaya (at Tukay Square, featuring mosaics illustrating scenes from Ğabdulla Tuqay's poems), and Sukonnaya Sloboda (beside the Ekiyat Puppet Theatre). Above ground, Kazan operates 62 bus routes served by uniformly red buses, 10 green trolleybus routes (operating since 1948), and 8 tram routes (one of Russia's oldest electric tram systems, opened in 1899), all accepting Russian-issued contactless bank cards and rechargeable transport cards (foreign Visa and Mastercard cards do not work in Russia, so visitors use a transport card bought with cash).