Marrakech to Fes (Fez), Morocco: Train, Road, Sahara

The Marrakech to Fes train takes about seven hours over 530 km, running via Casablanca. Driving direct takes six to seven and a half and shows you almost nothing in between. The third option — three days through the Sahara to Fez, Morocco — is the one most of our clients pick.

Marrakech to Fez, Morocco: train, road, or the long way round

This is the longest hop most visitors make in Morocco. Fes to Marrakech is the same problem in reverse, and it has the same three answers.

	Time	What you see	Cost
Train via Casablanca	~7h	A window	Cheapest
Direct drive	6h – 7h 30	A motorway, then a plain	Middle
Three-day desert crossing	3 days	Tichka, kasbahs, gorges, Erg Chebbi	Highest per day, similar per journey

The Fes–Marrakech distance is 530 km via the motorway through Casablanca and Rabat, or roughly 480 km on the direct inland road over the Middle Atlas. Counter-intuitively, the longer motorway route is the quicker one.

By train: the route, the change, the reality

The train Marrakech–Fes goes north to Casablanca, then east through Rabat, Meknes and on to Fes. Total time is about seven hours.

Some services run through without a change. On others you change at Casa Voyageurs, which is straightforward — same station, short wait — but is the detail people miss when they book. Check the day’s timetable on the ONCF site.

First class buys a reserved seat in an air-conditioned compartment. On a seven-hour run that is not a luxury, and the Marrakech–Fes train is one of the few journeys in Morocco where we would tell you to book ahead in April, October and over holidays.

The Fez–Marrakech train southbound is the same service reversed, on the same pattern. If you are travelling Fes to Marrakech by train, everything here applies unchanged.

Marrakech station is on Avenue Hassan II in Gueliz, 3 km from Jemaa el-Fna and the rest of Marrakech. Fes station is in the ville nouvelle, about 2 km from Bab Boujloud and the medina of Fes — a short petit taxi, and worth taking with luggage because the medina end of the walk is uphill.

Is there a direct train from Marrakech to Fes?

Sometimes. Through services exist and appear on the timetable; so, historically, have overnight services on this corridor. Both have changed more than once over the years.

The honest instruction is: look at the timetable for your date rather than trusting an article — including this one — for a departure time. What does not change is the seven hours and the route via Casablanca.

Driving it in one day

The direct drive from Marrakech to Fez, Morocco, splits into two genuine options.

The motorway. A7 north to Casablanca, round the bypass, A3 to Rabat, A2 east to Meknes and Fes. 530 km, and Google says six hours. It is fast, safe, tolled at maybe 200 MAD for a car, and completely empty of interest. Marrakech–Fes–Casablanca is really one road with a corner in it.

The inland road. N8 through Beni Mellal, then Khenifra, Azrou and down into Fes. About 480 km, mostly single carriageway, over the Middle Atlas through the cedar forests around Azrou where the Barbary macaques are. Slower — count seven hours before stops — but there is something to look at, and the cedar forest is genuinely beautiful.

Either way, with fuel, lunch and a leg stretch, 7h 30 is the honest door-to-door figure for a car making the trip in a day. We drive it when a vehicle has to be repositioned. We do not sell it, because six hours of motorway is not a holiday.

The alternative almost everyone chooses

Here is the arithmetic that changes people’s minds.

The train costs you seven hours and shows you a window. A one-way desert crossing costs you three days and takes you over the Tizi n’Tichka, through Aït Benhaddou and the kasbah road, down the Dades and Todra gorges, out to the dunes at Merzouga for a night in the Erg Chebbi, then north through the Ziz valley and the cedar forests into Fes.

You were going to spend two nights somewhere anyway. Put those nights on the route instead of at either end and the cost gap narrows to something most people consider fair. That is exactly what our three-day Marrakech to Fes crossing is, and the case for going one way rather than there-and-back is argued properly in why the one-way route wins.

It is not the right answer for everyone. If you have four days total in Morocco, take the train and spend the time in the two cities.

Flying between them

There have been direct domestic flights between the two cities. Frequencies change, and plenty of itineraries route through Casablanca instead.

Even on a good day: airport transfer, check-in, an hour in the air, another transfer. Against a seven-hour train that leaves from the middle of one city and arrives in the middle of the other, flying saves a couple of hours for several times the fare. It is worth it only if your calendar is genuinely broken.

By coach

CTM runs Marrakech to Fes in about eight to nine hours, including an overnight service. It is cheaper than the train, longer, and less comfortable for the same money-saving reason. If the train is running, take the train.

Going the other way: Fes to Marrakech, and Fes to Merzouga

Northbound and southbound are not symmetrical in practice, because of what people want at each end.

Fes to Marrakech by train is the same seven hours; the train from Fes to Marrakech is the same service reversed, and a search for Fez to Marrakech will find it under either spelling. Most visitors do this leg when Marrakech is their departure airport, which makes the Fes to Marrakech train the sensible choice — you do not want a three-day route ending the morning your flight leaves.

Fes to Merzouga is about eight hours by road, south through Ifrane and Azrou, over the Middle Atlas and down the Ziz valley with its palm gorge. No railway, no useful flight. Running the desert crossing northbound — Marrakech to Fes — or southbound is genuinely a coin toss; we do both, and the deciding factor is usually which city your flight home leaves from.

Which should you take?

• Short trip, cities only — the train. Seven hours, cheap, comfortable, book ahead.
• You want the Sahara and you are going to Fes anyway — the three-day crossing. Same journey, three days of country, no repeated road.
• A car that has to move and nobody minds — the motorway, six hours, and take the cedar forest route if you have the time to spare.
• A broken schedule — check for a direct flight, and expect it to save less than you hope.

Everything north of Marrakech is rail country and everything south of it is road country. Getting around Morocco draws that line and explains why this particular journey sits awkwardly across it.

---

If the transfer is going to eat a day anyway, it may as well be the best three days of the trip. Tell us your dates and your flights and we will show you both versions with honest hours on each.