Ryanair launched its Winter 2026 UK schedule on September 23, saying it will offer 435 routes from London and the wider UK. The airline’s corporate release lists three new Stansted routes — Glasgow, Malmö and Parma — plus a new Luton–Venice link, and another 18 new routes from 19 other UK airports as part of the winter programme.
The carrier positions itself as the UK’s largest passenger airline by traffic and says it expects to carry 63 million passengers to and from the UK in 2026. Alongside the route list, Ryanair again called for abolition of Air Passenger Duty, which it says rose to £15 per passenger in 2026 and is now the highest visitor tax in Europe, and criticised proposals that would let regional mayors add a second hotel “visitor tax.”
For network watchers, the concrete news is the winter map. Stansted–Glasgow adds a trunk Scottish link on Boeing 737 metal from Ryanair’s biggest UK base. Stansted–Malmö and Stansted–Parma extend the base into southern Sweden and northern Italy, while Luton–Venice deepens Ryanair’s presence at its second London airport on a classic leisure and visiting-friends-and-relatives flow that already supports dense low-cost capacity from other London gateways.
Eighteen further new routes from regional UK airports spread growth beyond the London system, a familiar Ryanair pattern when winter leisure demand shifts toward sun and city breaks. Exact city pairs for those 18 were not fully enumerated in the corporate summary, but the headline figure of 435 UK winter routes underscores how dense the airline’s British operation remains even in the off-peak IATA season.
Ryanair also restated a longer-term offer to grow UK traffic by 27 percent to 80 million passengers by 2030 if APD policy changes, and called for the dismissal of the NATS chief executive after what it described as a fourth air-traffic-control collapse in four years. Those political points sit beside, rather than replace, the schedule story that matters for passengers booking Christmas and ski-season travel.
Operationally, the winter programme keeps Ryanair’s UK Boeing 737 fleet busy when many full-service carriers trim frequencies. Adding Glasgow from Stansted strengthens domestic competition on a trunk route, while Malmö and Parma plant new international flags that can be grown in later seasons if loads support higher weekly frequencies.
Stansted remains the centre of gravity for the UK winter map, so the Glasgow, Malmö and Parma launches matter more than a single regional add-on. Luton’s Venice route similarly deepens a second London airport that Ryanair has spent years growing as an alternative to Stansted for leisure Italy traffic.
Whether the political APD arguments move policy is outside the schedule story. What passengers can book today is the Winter 2026 UK programme itself: 435 routes, new Stansted and Luton city pairs, and eighteen further regional launches listed in the September 23 corporate release.
Passengers shopping winter UK flights should compare Stansted and Luton against regional departures, and confirm whether a “new” city pair is a true launch or a seasonal return. As of Ryanair’s September 23 release, the Winter 2026 UK programme with 435 routes — including Stansted–Glasgow, Stansted–Malmö, Stansted–Parma and Luton–Venice — is the live commercial offer. Source reporting: Ryanair corporate news, September 23, 2026.
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