How to Get Around Zakynthos by Bus (2026 Guide): Routes, Stops, Times & Fares

Zakynthos — written Zante on plenty of flight tickets — has a small but genuinely useful local bus network, and you do not need a hire car to reach most of the island's beaches. KTEL Zakynthos (ΚΤΕΛ Ζακύνθου Α.Ε.) runs 10 local routes over 15 stops, almost all of them radiating out from the bus station in Zakynthos Town to the resorts — Argassi, Tsilivi, Alykes, Laganas, Kalamaki and Vasilikos — plus the airport line and a longer run north through Volimes to the port at Agios Nikolaos.

The Zakynthos bus network at a glance

Think of the island as a wheel with a single hub. The KTEL bus station in Zakynthos Town, on Iatrou Mothonaiou Street (tel. +30 26950 22255), is where nearly every local route starts and ends. Resort-to-resort travel almost always means riding back into town and out again — the one exception is the direct Laganas–Kalamaki link.

The second place to know is Solomos Square, the big square on the town waterfront. It is not just another stop: the northern service to Volimes and Agios Nikolaos port departs from Solomos Square, not from the KTEL station, and the Tsilivi line adds a set of Monday-to-Saturday departures from the square alongside the ones from the station. Turn up at the bus station for the northern bus and you will be standing in the wrong place.

One company runs all of it, so there is no urban-versus-intercity split to untangle. The same KTEL also runs the mainland coaches to Athens, Patras and Thessaloniki, which cross with you on the Kyllini ferry.

Main Zakynthos bus routes

• Zakynthos Town ↔ Tsilivi: the busiest line on the island by a clear margin, serving the north-coast resort strip, with extra Monday-to-Saturday runs from Solomos Square — route details.

• Zakynthos Town ↔ Laganas: one of the two heaviest southern lines, a short hop of well under half an hour, running all day and on into the small hours for Laganas's bars and its long sandy bay — route details.

• Zakynthos Town ↔ Kalamaki: just as frequent, for the quieter eastern end of Laganas Bay — route details.

• Laganas ↔ Kalamaki: the only local route that never touches the capital, a short hop between neighbouring resorts so you can eat in one and sleep in the other — route details.

• Zakynthos Town ↔ Argassi: a frequent short run east along the coast to the closest resort to town — route details.

• Zakynthos Town ↔ Vasilikos, Banana Beach, Agios Nikolaos Beach and Porto Roma: the beach line down the Vasilikos peninsula, calling at Argassi on the way — the best route if you want a different stretch of sand each day — route details.

• Zakynthos Town ↔ Airport: the direct link to Dionysios Solomos airport, just south-west of the capital — route details. See the airport section below before planning a flight around it.

• Zakynthos Town ↔ Alykes: the north-east coast resort and its shallow bay, about half an hour out; a handful of runs a day and none on Sundays. Departures from town are followed by returns exactly 40 minutes later, so the bus turns straight round and the last one back really is the last one — route details.

• Zakynthos Town ↔ Keri Lake (Limni Keriou): a few departures a day to the quiet south-western corner of Laganas Bay — route details.

• Solomos Square ↔ Volimes ↔ Agios Nikolaos Port (Skinari): the long climb through the northern mountain villages to the small port at Skinari — roughly an hour each way, and only two round trips a day, so work out your return before you set off — route details.

See the full Zakynthos bus timetable for every route, stop and departure time.

Getting from the airport and the ferry port

Zakynthos airport (ZTH) sits between the capital and Laganas, close enough that the bus is a real option and the run is short — about a quarter of an hour. There are seven departures each way: from town they run between 08:15 and 19:15, and from the airport between 08:30 and 19:30. Read the day labels carefully, though: the operator's own page prints WEEK DAYS over the town-to-airport times and EVERYDAY over the airport-to-town times, while the summer poster gives the airport block no day note at all. So the ride into town can be taken as daily; it is the weekend outbound that is unresolved, and worth a call to the station on +30 26950 22255. For a flight before 08:15 or after 19:30, budget for a taxi. There is no airport bus straight to the resorts either — everything runs via the town station, so reaching Tsilivi or Vasilikos means two buses.

Ferries from Kyllini on the mainland dock in Zakynthos Town itself, and there is no dedicated port shuttle — the quay is roughly a 700-metre walk from the KTEL station. Step off the boat, walk, and pick up your resort bus there. If you are heading for the small northern port at Agios Nikolaos (Skinari), that is the far end of the Volimes line from Solomos Square — two round trips a day and roughly an hour each way, so it takes the whole day. It is a genuine island-hopping connection: Ionian Sea Ferries states that its vessel Vasos K. runs the seasonal crossing between Pessada on Kefalonia and Agios Nikolaos on Zakynthos, with tickets sold through partner agencies rather than online. The operator publishes no timetable, season dates, crossing time or fare for it, so confirm the sailing locally first and plan the bus around the boat, not the other way round. The same little port is also, typically, where the boat trips to the Blue Caves and Navagio leave from.

Tickets and fares

You pay on board or at the kiosk in the Zakynthos Town station, and fares are set per route rather than per stop. The KTEL Zakynthos summer poster prints a price against every route: €2.20 for Tsilivi, Laganas, Kalamaki, Argassi, Alykes and the Vasilikos–Banana–St Nikolas–Porto Roma line, €2.30 to Keri Lake, €3.50 to the airport and €7.00 for the northern run to Agios Nikolaos port via Volimes. Treat those as this season's prices. Carry cash in small notes and coins; card acceptance on board is not something to count on. Where a route can be booked online through Greek Island Buses, you pay the same price with no booking fee and board with a QR code on your phone.

Buses, beaches and the Laganas Bay marine park

The whole southern arc of the island — Laganas, Kalamaki, Keri Lake and the Vasilikos peninsula — lies in or beside the National Marine Park of Zakynthos, created to protect the loggerhead turtles that nest on Laganas Bay. That is both why these beaches are the island's biggest draw and why they are actively managed: rules on access, sunbeds and night-time use are posted at each nesting beach, and those boards are the version to trust. The park's own website is no longer maintained — management passed to the state agency NECCA — so anything you read about the rules elsewhere is second-hand. Taking the Vasilikos beach bus instead of a hire car is a small, easy thing to do for a bay under real pressure — and it saves you the August parking scrum at Banana Beach.

Summer poster, thin winter

This network is built around the resort season, and the publishing habits show it: the timetable is a single poster image rather than a proper timetable page. Read the small print on it. The artwork the operator still links to is titled 29 June – 2 August 2026, a window that has now closed; the extension to 31 August exists only in the title of the announcement wrapping it, and the image itself was never replaced. The times are assumed unchanged, but this is where a phone call is worth two minutes. The per-route pages lag behind the poster too — the Alykes page still showed older first departures when this guide was written — so trust the poster where they disagree, and confirm the departure you need. The autumn and winter table had not been published at the time of writing.

Outside high summer, expect noticeably less. Evening departures thin out as hotels close, and Sunday service is patchy even in season: Alykes and Laganas–Kalamaki have no Sunday buses at all, while Keri Lake and the northern port run keep the same times seven days a week. Between November and April, check the current Zakynthos timetable before booking somewhere you can only reach by bus.

Three local quirks worth knowing

First, the last two Laganas departures of the night, at 22:30 and 00:15, are marked Crossroad Ionian: they leave from the Ionian crossroad junction rather than the main Laganas stop, which matters a great deal at midnight. Second, the Vasilikos beach bus is timed from Argassi as well as from town, so guests in Argassi can join it there instead of backtracking into the capital. Third, a Zakynthos–Agios Sostis line appears in the operator's route menu with no times published against it — do not build a day out around it.

Plan your trip

Browse the complete Zakynthos bus timetable for every departure, check the route pages for the stops on your line, and buy online where that option exists.