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Metro: An Exhibition Celebrates the End of Paper Tickets This Weekend

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The Editor

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We've been hearing about it since 2021. After more than 5 years of delays, postponements, and extensions, the paper ticket should finally be disappearing by the end of the year. A real revolution in the history of the Paris Metro, which the RATP intends to celebrate this weekend as it should during the European Heritage Days.

On January 1st, 2025, the RATP and Île-de-France Mobilités (IDFM) rolled out a single ticket for the entire region. A drastic measure that was supposed to come with the gradual disappearance of the mythical paper ticket. Yet, more than a year and a half later, the latter continues to circulate with complete impunity in the metro corridors. But not for much longer.


The end is near

By the end of the year, after months of postponing the inevitable and clinging to life, the cardboard ticket will finally bow out. This is at least the news announced by the RATP and IDFM this fall of 2026. Indeed, while it has no longer been sold since November 2025, it will cease to be accepted as a transport ticket

lide, and that's starting Tuesday, December 15, 2026, which will definitely be a day worth marking with a white stone on your calendar. If you happen to still have quite a stash of them lying around though, don't worry, an exchange program has already been set up. All you need to do is head to a station ticket window by January 14, 2027, to swap your little cardboard tickets for a digital version, with a limit of 5 tickets per day per person.


Well-deserved honor

To pay tribute to this little piece of cardboard measuring 6.5 centimeters by 3, and bid it a proper farewell, Paris's public transport authority invites you to explore its entire history through an exhibition available at the RATP House all weekend. Free admission, it will be open from 10am to 6pm this Saturday and Sunday, September 19 and 20, as part of the European Heritage Days (EHD). That won't be the only event taking place, as you'll also be able to enjoy metro driving simulations, attend a conference about the paper ticket, take part in vintage bus rides, or visit the exhibition "The Traveler's Eye", imagined for the bicentenary of photography, to celebrate subway passengers and their unique perspective on this mode of transport.

European Heritage Days 2026
RATP
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