The Lake Como Ferry: Three Services, One Fare System

The Como to Colico line is the spine. It runs the length of the lake and its board carried 37 departures from Como on the autumn 2026 sheet, the first at 07:33 and the last at 19:45, ten of them fast-service runs. That single line is what connects the town of Como to Cernobbio, Argegno, Lenno, Tremezzo, Villa Carlotta, Cadenabbia, Bellagio, Menaggio, Varenna, Bellano, Dongo, Gravedona and Colico.

A second, much thinner line works the Bellagio to Lecco branch, which is the arm most visitors never see.

Two absences catch people out every season. Laglio, the village everyone asks about because of one famous villa, has no landing stage at all: the boat passes it and does not stop, and the only public way in is the C110 bus along the shore road. Brunate has no pier either, because Brunate sits at 689 metres on the hillside above Como and is reached by the funicular from Como, not by water.

Neither of those is a service cut; neither pier has ever existed.

• Piers that carry the visitor traffic: Como, Cernobbio, Argegno, Lenno, Tremezzo, Villa Carlotta, Cadenabbia, Bellagio, San Giovanni, Menaggio, Varenna, Bellano, Colico.
• Piers on the car ferry only: none. All four car-ferry piers, Cadenabbia, Bellagio, Menaggio and Varenna, are also served by the ordinary ship.
• Named places with no pier: Laglio (road access only), Brunate (funicular only), Castello di Vezio (a climb up from Varenna).
• The Villa Carlotta pier and the Cadenabbia pier are separate calls a few minutes apart, and the fare between them is the urban stretch.

If your plan is the classic centre-lake triangle, you are dealing with three piers inside one fare stretch, which makes the geography easy: Bellagio, Varenna and Menaggio are all stretch 3 from one another, and Bellagio to Tremezzo, to Villa Carlotta and to Cadenabbia are stretch 3 too. Bellagio to its own hamlet of San Giovanni is the urban stretch. That is the whole reason a day pass for the triangle is affordable while one that reaches Como is not.

This is the table the operator actually publishes. Return is exactly double the one way. The right-hand column is the extra you pay to be on a hydrofoil or catamaran, and it is the trap: it is added on top, and it takes no reduction, so a senior or a child pays the full supplement.

There is an irreducible minimum of $2.10 (€1.80) one way and $4.19 (€3.60) return, so no reduction can take a fare below it, and a special urban stretch marked U at $1.75 (€1.50) covers three very short hops: Como to Tavernola, Villa Carlotta to Cadenabbia and San Giovanni to Bellagio. Children under four travel free if they do not occupy a seat. Passengers with a certified disability of 70 to 100 per cent, blind passengers included, take the same reduction as a child.

Placing your pier on the stretch ladder

One number does the work of the whole chart: the stretch from Como rises with distance up the lake. Cernobbio and Blevio are 1; Moltrasio, Torno and Urio are 2; Nesso, Brienno, Argegno and Colonno are 4; Lenno and Sala Comacina are 5; the whole centre-lake cluster of Tremezzo, Villa Carlotta, Cadenabbia, Bellagio and Menaggio is 6; Varenna, Bellano and Dervio are 7; Dongo, Gravedona, Domaso and Colico are 8. If you can place your pier in that ladder you can price any journey on the lake without looking anything up.

Read the last column carefully. The operator prints journey times on the car-ferry sheet, run by run, but on the long line it prints departure and arrival times rather than a duration, and the duration varies by how many piers that particular run calls at. Where we cannot quote the operator's own figure we say so rather than average one.

Which crossings are worth paying an operator for

The decision this table hides is the one worth making out loud. If your base is Varenna, Bellagio or Menaggio, the boat is the cheapest good thing on the lake and you will use it several times a day for the price of a coffee. If your base is Como town and your target is Bellagio, the ordinary boat eats a large part of the day in each direction, the fast boat costs $19.81 (€17) each way, and a scheduled trip such as a four-hour cruise calling at Bellagio and Varenna or the Como to Bellagio speedboat with a stop is doing something the timetable cannot.

That is the one place on this lake where paying an operator genuinely buys time rather than comfort.

The three circular tickets, and what they do not reach

Three circular tickets exist, and they are the only products on the lake that allow intermediate stops on a single ticket: Como to Urio at $12.12 (€10.40) full and $6.76 (€5.80) reduced, Como to Nesso at $19.46 (€16.70) and $10.84 (€9.30), Lecco to Onno at $12.82 (€11) and $6.53 (€5.60). All three are valid from 1 April 2026. None of them reaches Bellagio, which is why they solve almost nobody's actual problem, but they are the honest answer to anybody searching for a hop-on hop-off boat.

The two periods on the operator's page when we last read it were summer, 1 July to 4 October 2026, and autumn, 5 October to 1 November 2026. Both cover the Como to Colico line, the Bellagio to Lecco branch and the car ferry, and the car ferry carries separate weekday and Sunday or holiday sheets. The winter timetable was not published at all: the most recent winter notice on the site was the ferry-boat change of 10 November 2025, which altered only the 06:25 to 08:00 slot.

So if you are travelling between November and Easter, the honest position is that the operator has not yet told anybody what the service will be, and the sheet has to be checked again close to the date.

First and last runs on the car ferry

The first and last runs on the car ferry, from the autumn 2026 weekday sheet, are the ones worth writing down, because they are what an early train or a late dinner depends on:

• Bellagio to Varenna: first 06:05, last 22:00.
• Menaggio to Varenna: first 06:20, last 20:10. This is the earliest of the four to shut, and it strands people who assume the whole triangle runs late.
• Cadenabbia to Bellagio: first 05:50, last 22:55.
• Bellagio to Cadenabbia: first 05:40, last 22:40.
• On the long Como line the first departure from Como on the autumn sheet was 07:33, a fast-service run, and the last was 19:45.

One date the operator has not reconciled

One discrepancy is worth flagging because it is the operator's own. The autumn timetable PDF header reads 5 October to 1 November 2026, while the Italian site page advertises the same set of sheets as running from 4 October. The PDF is the more specific document and we follow it, but if you are travelling on either of those two dates, take the printed sheet with you rather than the website's summary.

A live restriction was also running when we checked: a notice of 6 August 2026 limited car-ferry boarding to vehicles up to 100 quintals gross, that is 10 tonnes, because of low lake water, against the usual 400-quintal limit. Campervan drivers should re-read that notice before travelling.

The vehicle price comes in two forms: vehicle only, which applies when the driver already holds a passenger ticket, and vehicle with driver. Passengers riding inside the vehicle pay the ordinary stretch-3 passenger fare on top.

An oversize surcharge of $3.85 (€3.30) applies for each indivisible metre beyond the first. A book of ten crossings can be bought, but it is tied to one number plate, each box is stamped ashore rather than on board, and it expires on the 180th day. For a visitor staying a week that book is rarely worth it; for anyone commuting between the shores it is the obvious purchase.

The car ferry is also the answer to a question nobody asks until they are standing on the pier: what to do when the ordinary boat you wanted is full. Boarding on this lake is by gangway from a floating pontoon, and when a boat is full it simply leaves. On the centre-lake triangle the car ferry runs on its own frequent sheet alongside the ordinary service, so a foot passenger who has just been left behind at Varenna can usually walk to the ferry slip and cross anyway.

That is the single most useful piece of local knowledge on this page, and you can see the pier geography on the map of the lake.

Bicycles are banned on the fast service outright. On the ordinary ship they are allowed at the crew's discretion, which in practice means on a quiet autumn morning yes and on an August Saturday no, and the passenger tariff prints no price for a bicycle on the ordinary boat at all. The only published bicycle rate on the whole lake is the car-ferry one: $1.40 (€1.20) for the bicycle alone or $7.81 (€6.70) with its rider.

If your trip depends on carrying a bike, the car ferry is the service with a rule you can rely on, and the regional trains carry bicycles free inside Lombardy, which is covered on getting around Lake Como.

Dogs under 50 centimetres at the withers travel free. Larger dogs pay the reduced fare, that is the 1.50 column on the tariff, and are not allowed on hydrofoils or catamarans at all. Guide dogs travel free.

Luggage is one free item per passenger, with the longest side under 0.60 metres and a volume under 40 cubic decimetres; anything larger, and every additional item whatever its size, is charged. That is a genuinely small allowance by airline standards, and it applies on the day you move between hotels.

Buying on board costs $1.17 (€1) extra per passenger, per luggage item and per bicycle, but only where the departure pier had an open ticket office. At an unstaffed pier there is no surcharge, which is the operator being fair rather than generous. Where and how to buy, including online and the day pass, is on the Lake Como ferry tickets page.

There is no missed-departure clause. What exists instead is the validity rule, and it saves you: an ordinary ticket is valid for the whole day it was issued, so a missed slow boat simply means waiting for the next one on the same ticket. The fast service is the exception, because a fast ticket and its supplement are tied to that run and allow no intermediate stops, so a missed hydrofoil is a lost fare.

That asymmetry is the strongest practical argument for the ordinary boat on a day with a tight connection.

A refund is due in four cases only, all of them printed: the departure ran 60 minutes or more late, the departure was cancelled, the authorities barred you from travelling, or there was no room on board. Separately, you may renounce a trip within 30 minutes of the ticket being issued and take a refund with up to $3.50 (€3) deducted. Nothing else qualifies.

For the wider disruptions, the answer is usually a road. If the boat is not running, the west shore has the C110 bus along the SS340 and the east shore has the Milan to Tirano railway calling at Varenna-Esino-Perledo; both are covered on getting around Lake Como, and the road conditions that can close the west shore are on driving and parking. If a hire car is the problem rather than the solution, a guided day such as a small-group cruise with the transfers included hands the whole logistics problem to somebody else.