The route today

There is no Rosslare to Roscoff ferry, and there has not been one since 2018. Irish Ferries ran it from 1995, latterly with the Oscar Wilde, pairing it with a Rosslare–Cherbourg service. In December 2018 the company said it did not expect to operate any sailings at all between Rosslare and France the following year. On 20 December, the day its new ship W.B. Yeats first reached Dublin, French media reported that she would not be calling at Roscoff. That closed the route.

The stated reason and the port’s account of it do not match. Ole Bockman, then Irish Ferries’ director in France, said berthing a vessel of that size at Roscoff would be considered dangerous. Jean-Paul Chapalain, president of the port management company at Roscoff, confirmed the company had been given its contractual six months’ notice, and added that Irish Ferries had raised no concerns about the port at a recent face-to-face meeting. Both versions were published at the time. Neither has been reconciled since.

One footnote complicates the flat ‘never since 2018’. For eight weeks in early 2021, when post-Brexit paperwork was pushing hauliers off the British landbridge, Brittany Ferries ran an emergency freight rotation that included a Roscoff to Rosslare leg every Wednesday. It began on 4 February 2021 with the Armorique and ran to the end of March. Freight only, one direction only, and gone within two months.

What replaced it is not a like-for-like substitute. Brittany Ferries lists exactly two Ireland–France routes today: Cork–Roscoff and Rosslare–Cherbourg. Rosslare Europort’s own passenger route map names Fishguard, Pembroke, Cherbourg and Bilbao. Roscoff appears on neither.

The timetable

Read this table as an answer to a question you did not ask. You wanted Rosslare to Roscoff; what exists is the rest of it. The Cork times run to 31 October 2026, and the last Cork departure of the year is an oddity worth knowing: Saturday 31 October at 16:01, arriving 08:45, worked by the Armorique rather than the Pont-Aven that normally has Saturdays. Roscoff–Cork Fridays drift late in the season, to 22:50 on 9 October and 22:00 on 23 October, and the season closes on Friday 30 October with a 20:00 departure. Cherbourg times shift again in winter, when 13:00 and 19:30 departures from France appear, the Rosslare arrival moves to 13:30 and the Cherbourg arrival to 12:30, and the Galicia takes some of the work. All times are local, France is an hour ahead of Ireland, and the operator warns the tide can move any of them by an hour.

Route map

Wexford to the north coast of Finistère was a direct Celtic Sea crossing for twenty-three years. The pins are still there. The boat is not.

Ticket prices

Both columns were read from the same booking engine, minutes apart, for the same Wednesday. Look at what happens. A car and two adults costs €207 either way. So does a car and one, a car and four, a car with two children, a bicycle, a motorbike and a single walk-on. Brittany Ferries is charging identically for a 15-hour crossing to Brittany and a 19-hour one to Normandy, which means price is not the lever here. The lever is the 389 km you drive afterwards, or the 202 km you drive beforehand to reach Ringaskiddy. Three exceptions break the symmetry. Two walk-on passengers pay €190 to Roscoff but €212 to Cherbourg, because the Cherbourg engine reprices everyone at €106 a head the moment there are two of you; that pattern held at three passengers too, and we re-queried it to be sure. A family cabin is cheaper on the Cherbourg boat, €98 against €134. And the Cotentin came back flagged as carrying no pets on every date we tested, while every Cork–Roscoff sailing accepted them. Selecting Brittany Ferries’ economy fare instead of the standard one took exactly €25 off every vehicle line on both routes.

Choosing an operator

Here is the number that explains the whole page. We pulled Brittany Ferries’ timetable feed for every relevant port pair on 6 August 2026. Over the fifteen months it covers, from August 2026 to early November 2027, the feed carries 259 departures from Rosslare to Cherbourg, 91 from Cork to Roscoff and none whatsoever from Rosslare to Roscoff. So if Brittany is the destination and Wexford is the starting point, these are the three things you can actually buy.

On the other side

Roscoff did not stop being a ferry port. It stopped being an Irish one. Port du Bloscon still takes the Pont-Aven and the Armorique from Ringaskiddy twice a week in season, and Brittany Ferries itself was founded here, out of a Breton growers’ co-operative that wanted to ship its artichokes and cauliflowers straight out of Roscoff instead of trucking them across France to the Channel ports. The deep-water quay was built for exactly that.

Size is what ended the Irish link from Wexford. The berthing objection raised in 2018 concerned a specific ship at a specific quay, not the port in general, which is why Cork–Roscoff carried on untouched while Rosslare–Roscoff disappeared. Whether that objection was the real reason is a question the two published accounts leave open.

Fifteen minutes on foot separates the terminal from the town centre, by the operator’s own reckoning: a granite church tower of the sixteenth century, a beach that comes and goes with the tide, a marine research station, and the boat over to the Île de Batz. We give no population figure because we could not find one on a French government or commune source.

Tickets in advance

A cabin or reserved seat is not optional on either route. The pricing feed flagged accommodation as mandatory on every Cork–Roscoff and every Rosslare–Cherbourg sailing we queried, in both directions, and the operator’s booking terms say the same for overnight crossings while any accommodation remains. Budget from €67 on top of the fare for two people, more in summer.

Timing is the other trap, and it bites differently on each. Cork–Roscoff simply stops: nothing at all between 31 October 2026 and 24 March 2027, a gap of 144 days that the feed confirms rather than implies. Cherbourg keeps going through the winter with a four-day pause at Christmas. August is where Cherbourg gets awkward instead. Across the whole month, the only Rosslare departures our queries could put a price on were the Monday Santoña sailings, at €350 on 10 August, €336 on the 17th, €306 on the 24th and €245 on the 31st; every Cotentin departure that month returned no fare at all. We cannot tell from the feed alone whether that means sold out or missing data, so treat it as a warning to book August early rather than as a count of what is left.

Accessibility

Rosslare Europort publishes more than most Irish terminals do. There are designated disabled bays in the car park and further bays beside the main entrance, accessible toilets throughout, and a special minibus service to help wheelchair users and their companions board the ship. Assistance dogs are welcome at the port. The arrangements have to be made through the ferry operator rather than the port, and the port will be told in advance. Rail passengers book assistance separately with Iarnród Éireann, on iewheelchairbookings@irishrail.ie or 01 8366 222.

Brittany Ferries is blunter about its own limits. Requirements must be given at booking and again once more when you collect the ticket. The operator reserves the right to cap how many passengers needing individual assistance it carries on any one crossing. It recommends travelling with an able-bodied companion. Booking and assistance for Ireland goes through 021 427 7801. One thing we can add from the data: on every sailing we priced across both routes, in both directions, the engine returned no wheelchair-accessible cabin on any sailing that was not already marked full. Adapted cabins do exist on these ships. None of them was bookable online on 6 August 2026, which argues for the telephone and for booking months out.

At the Roscoff end the terminal is wheelchair accessible, with disabled toilets, designated parking in front of the building, wheelchairs on request and a shuttle bus with ramp access.

Things people get wrong

Cars and bikes

Pets are the sharpest difference between the two surviving crossings, and it is not a rule the operator states in words anywhere we could find. It falls out of the booking engine. Every Cork–Roscoff sailing we priced came back accepting animals. Every Cotentin sailing on Rosslare–Cherbourg came back refusing them, on every date tested, while the Santoña nights on the same route accepted them. Brittany Ferries publishes a pet page for the Santoña and none at all for the Cotentin. If you are travelling with a dog from Rosslare, the ship decides, not the route.

Bicycles cost the same on both: €100 for bike and rider on 14 October, five euro more than the same person walking on. Motorbikes were €116. Neither bicycles nor foot passengers qualify for Brittany Ferries’ headline 7-day return offer, which covers Cork–Roscoff and Rosslare–Cherbourg at €342 for a car and two, for travel up to 2 November 2026, and which excludes vehicles over 6 m long or 2.6 m high.

Continuing your journey

• Roscoff has no railway station. The nearest is Morlaix, which Brittany Ferries puts at about 35 minutes by bus, and TGV services run on to Paris and the rest of France from there.
• The Roscoff–Morlaix bus has a stop called simply Ferry at the terminal itself, so you need not walk into town to catch it. Brittany Ferries still calls the line Ligne 29; BreizhGo now signs it 929. No current times or fares appear here because the 2026 leaflet sits behind a Cloudflare gate that returns 403.
• Arriving at Cherbourg instead, Roscoff is 389 km away, about four hours forty-five by our own OpenStreetMap routing. Morlaix, the railhead for Roscoff, is 365 km from Cherbourg by road, so the train does not rescue you either.
• Cherbourg does have a station, at the western end of the Mantes-la-Jolie line, with services to Caen and Paris Saint-Lazare. Brittany is not on that line. Rennes is roughly 234 km by road from Cherbourg and 213 km from Roscoff, which is the clearest statement of what the closure moved.
• Leaving a car at Roscoff costs nothing for stays up to a week, provided you pick up a permit from the desk in the terminal building first. Longer than that and you use the separate free area by the entrance to Port du Bloscon.

The departure point

Rosslare Europort is not the problem here. The terminal is open round the clock, it has its own railway station in the port estate, and it handles four passenger routes. None of them goes to Roscoff. If you are heading for Brittany from Wexford, this is still the building you want, because Cherbourg leaves from it.

• Check-in. Brittany Ferries asks Rosslare passengers to arrive at least 45 minutes before departure, and 90 minutes with a pet.
• Parking, briefly. Rates start at €1 an hour and run to €5 a day and €25 a week, in a car park the operator sizes at 335 spaces. Payment is by app or QR code only; the machines are gone, whatever the operator’s port page still says. Since no Roscoff sailing leaves from here, the full breakdown lives on the pages for the crossings that do: Rosslare to Cherbourg and Rosslare to Bilbao.
• By train. The station is in the port estate, and the line up to Dublin Connolly is quoted at as many as five services daily and under three hours. There is no ticket office, only a machine at the platform entrance, and a signed walk to the terminal that the port times at seven minutes and the operator at ten.
• By bus. At the Rosslare Harbour stop beside the terminal building, Brittany Ferries names Bus Éireann routes 40, 132, 370 and 379 together with TFI Local Link 387. The two that matter for most people are the 387 from Wexford, seven days a week, and the 370 from Waterford via New Ross and Wellington Bridge. We publish no departure times for either: the Local Link PDF answers a fetch with a 403 and the Bus Éireann timetable sits behind JavaScript. More context in buses in Wexford.
• Inside. Free Wi-Fi, vending machines, luggage lockers, tourist information, car hire, baby changing, showers on the ground floor, and an open-air terrace upstairs.
• The rest of the board. Same terminal, other directions: Cherbourg, Bilbao, Fishguard and Pembroke Dock.

Good to know before you sail