Navigazione Laghi Schedules 2026

Gestione Navigazione Laghi is not a shipping company in the ordinary sense. It is an arm of the Italian state, created by Law no. 614 of 1957, and the person in charge of it is an official of the state administration appointed by the Minister of Infrastructure and Transport — currently Dr Pietro Marrapodi. It runs the scheduled boats on Lakes Maggiore, Garda and Como.

One of its ships was launched in 1904 and is still working

Scheduled service on the three lakes began in 1826–27, when the Lombardo-Sardo-Ticinese company put the steamers Verbano on Lake Maggiore and Lario on Lake Como, followed shortly by Arciduca Ranieri on Garda. The steamship Piemonte, commissioned in 1904, is still in service on Lake Maggiore. The first ferry built to carry cars entered service in 1933. For decades the boats also ran a postal service, complete with postmarking carried out on board.

Why the state took it over

The lines were privately run and commercially successful until 1948, when damage from the Second World War stopped the companies operating altogether. The state stepped in to keep the service alive, and in 1957 the special law reorganised it permanently under the Ministry of Transport. Today the operation runs from a central directorate in Milan with three departments — Arona for Maggiore, Desenzano for Garda and Como for its own lake — plus four shipyards at Arona, Peschiera del Garda, Como and Dervio.

99 vessels, 11 million passengers

The combined fleet has reached 99 vessels — motor ships, car ferries, hydrofoils and catamarans — with a total capacity of roughly 30,000 passengers. Annual traffic is over 11 million passengers and 700,000 vehicles. In peak months the organisation employs up to 650 people. Tourism drives the spring and summer peaks, but a substantial part of the load is students and workers commuting.

The three busiest crossings all carry cars

We hold 895 departures across 56 routes for this operator. The heaviest is on Como: Cadenabbia to Bellagio and back, ten minutes, 110 departures between them. Next comes Maggiore’s Laveno to Verbania Intra and its return at twenty minutes and 86. On Garda it is Maderno to Torri del Benaco and back, thirty minutes, 34. All three are vehicle ferries, and together they account for well over a quarter of everything listed here.

The Como ferry is a quadrilateral with one side missing

Four terminals sit at the point where Lake Como splits into its two southern arms: Cadenabbia and Menaggio on the west shore, Bellagio on the promontory between the arms, and Varenna on the east. Five of the six possible pairings run. The one that does not is Cadenabbia to Menaggio — the two west-shore towns sit a few kilometres apart on the same lakeside road, so nobody would take a boat between them. Every other combination exists, and the rarest is the long diagonal Cadenabbia to Varenna, thirty minutes, with only six weekday departures against twenty-seven on the short hop to Bellagio.

Weekday and Sunday are different services, not different frequencies

The summer traghetto timetable, valid 1 July to 4 October 2026, is published as two separate documents. Feriali runs Monday to Saturday and carries 184 departures; festivi covers Sundays and public holidays — 15 August counts as one — with 164. The difference is not only volume. On weekdays Varenna to Menaggio is timed at fifteen minutes; on Sundays every single one of those sailings is timed at thirty, because the direct run is not offered and the boat goes the long way round.

The small print on the Como timetable is worth reading

Four things the schedule columns do not tell you. Places are limited to the capacity of the boat — there is no reservation, so a full sailing means waiting for the next one. Buying on board costs €1.00 extra for each passenger, each piece of luggage and each vehicle, waived only if the shore ticket office is shut. Some runs carry no bicycles at all and others take them only if incoming traffic allows, both marked by symbol on the printed timetable. And boarding in a wheelchair may be limited or refused by the captain on safety grounds, which is why the company asks wheelchair users to phone ahead on 031-579211. Departure times themselves can shift with traffic conditions at the landing stages.

Check the notices before you travel

The company runs a live notices feed and it is worth a look, because the disruptions are specific rather than generic. In the summer of 2026 alone it carried a suspension of calls at Santa Caterina, delay warnings on the Intra–Laveno crossing, load restrictions on the car ferries, and a rule barring bicycles and scooters from the Sirmione call. The information line is 800-551801.

What this timetable still leaves out

The Como data here is the car ferry only. Navigazione Laghi also publishes a ship and fast service between Como and Colico and a ship line Bellagio to Lecco on the same lake, and neither is in our data. On Garda we hold the Maderno vehicle crossing but not the Desenzano–Peschiera–Riva passenger line. So: complete for cars on Como and Maggiore, incomplete for everything that only carries people.