New Delhi, July 16 (IANS). Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation (IRCTC) has launched the beta version of its new website for crores of passengers. This new portal aims to make the ticket booking process faster, easier and more user-friendly than ever before. At present, a beta version of the website has been released, so that necessary improvements can be made in it after taking feedback from the passengers. Railways says that the new portal will be fully launched in the next few weeks after incorporating all the suggestions.
The new website of IRCTC has gone live from 9 pm on 15 July 2026. Its launch was announced by Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav during his visit to Malviya National Institute of Technology (MNIT) in Jaipur last month. At present, both the new and old websites are working together, so that passengers do not have to face any kind of problem.
After the launch of the new website, the biggest question was whether passengers would have to register again. The answer is no. Passengers can login to the new website using their old IRCTC user ID and password. There is no need to create a new separate account for this.
Many such features have been added to the new website, which will make ticket booking easier than ever. The biggest change is smart captcha. Now the hassle of repeatedly filling captcha during login and ticket booking has been eliminated to a great extent. Apart from this, unnecessary pop-ups, flashy graphics and distracting elements have also been removed, making the website experience more intuitive.
The second major change has been made regarding seat availability. Now passengers will not have to search again and again for different categories like sleeper, third AC and second AC. The availability of seats in all classes will be visible on a single screen.
Fast checkout feature has also been added to make the booking process faster. The number of steps one had to go through earlier while booking tickets has been reduced. With this, the entire process will be completed in less time than before.
Easy repeat booking facility is also provided for frequent travelers. In this, the information of the passengers will be already saved, so that there will be no need to enter name, age and other details again while booking the ticket next time.
Passengers can use the new beta website by visiting https://www.irctc.co.in/eticket/. At the same time, those who open the existing website of IRCTC will also see a direct link to go to the new website on the homepage itself.
According to Railways, the main objective of releasing the beta version is to get suggestions and feedback from passengers. Passengers will be able to share their experiences after using the new website. Based on these suggestions, further improvements will be made in the website, so that the final version can be made more useful and convenient.
It is noteworthy that the IRCTC website, which was started in the year 2002, is today included in the busiest online ticket booking platform in the country. Currently, an average of 14.5 lakh train tickets are booked every day through this portal. In view of the ever-increasing user base and traffic, it became necessary to modernize the technical infrastructure of the website.
Railways has clarified that this change is not limited to the new design of the website only. Along with this, the decades old passenger reservation system is also being upgraded. The biggest challenge was that the ticket booking service could not be stopped even for a minute during this entire process. Therefore, work on the new system was done in parallel while keeping the old system running.
Railways says that currently the feedback of passengers is being taken through beta version. The new IRCTC portal will be made fully available to all passengers in the next few weeks as soon as the new passenger reservation engine and website are fully ready. Till then, passengers can use the new beta website or continue booking tickets through the old portal as before.
–IANS
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