Late-Night Groceries in Switzerland: Where You Can Still Shop After Hours

After normal closing time, four categories of shop stay open in Switzerland, and what separates them is the assortment they are allowed to carry — which drives the price: the station supermarket (a real Migros or Coop with the normal range), the airport supermarket, the convenience formats at stations and petrol stations, and the petrol-station shop on a main traffic route. Verified in August 2026: per the Migros store finder, the Migros inside Zurich main station opens Monday to Friday 06:30 to 22:00 and Saturday and Sunday 08:00 to 22:00; the Migros at Basel SBB station Monday to Friday 06:00 to 22:00 and Saturday and Sunday 07:30 to 22:00; the Migros at Bern station daily 08:00 to 21:00. The widest legal window belongs to petrol-station shops on motorway service areas and main routes with heavy travel traffic: for those, the exemption applies «for the whole night and the whole Sunday» (Ordinance 2 to the Labour Act, ArGV 2, SR 822.112, Art. 26 para. 2bis).

Last reviewed: August 2026. Sources: Labour Act (ArG), SR 822.11, Art. 10, Art. 27 paras. 1ter and 1quater and Art. 71 lit. c. Ordinance 2 to the Labour Act (ArGV 2), SR 822.112, as at 1 February 2026, Art. 25, Art. 26 and Art. 26a. WBF ordinance designating stations and airports, SR 822.112.1, as at 1 September 2019, Art. 1. Migros store finder, filialen.migros.ch, branch pages for Zürich Hauptbahnhof, Basel Bahnhof SBB and Bern Bahnhof, retrieved 3 August 2026. Zurich Airport shop directory, flughafen-zuerich.ch, retrieved 3 August 2026. Genève Aéroport shop directory, gva.ch, retrieved 3 August 2026. avec.ch, retrieved 3 August 2026. Individual branch hours change; the chain's own branch page is always the more current source. Note that the legally binding ordinance text is in German, French and Italian; the English wording here is a translation.

Rappn is the only neutral grocery price comparison app in Switzerland, with no commercial agreements with any retailer.

Which shops are still open after 8pm in Switzerland?

Short answer: almost only the ones sitting on a transport node. That is not a coincidence, it is the direct consequence of the rule that lets these businesses employ staff at night and on Sundays at all. So if you need something in the evening, do not look for the nearest supermarket. Look for the nearest station, airport or main traffic route.

And within those four categories there is a distinction most guides skip: two of them are real supermarkets and two are not. A Migros inside a station is a Migros. A kiosk in the same station is legally a different thing, with a different assortment mandate.

Ranked by price, that reads as follows: in categories 1 and 2 you pay ordinary supermarket prices, weekly promotions included. Categories 3 and 4 are by definition travel ranges, not weekly-shop ranges. Doing your basic shopping there means paying for the access as well as the product.

How late may a station, kiosk or petrol-station shop legally open?

The first surprise: for the evening, a shop needs no special exemption at all. The Labour Act (ArG, SR 822.11) states in Art. 10 para. 1 that work from 6am to 8pm counts as day work and work from 8pm to 11pm as evening work, and that neither requires a permit; the employer may introduce evening work after consulting the staff representation or the employees concerned. Up to 23:00, federal labour law is therefore not the obstacle. If most shops nevertheless close at 18:30 or 19:00, that is not Bern's doing: Art. 71 lit. c ArG expressly reserves the police regulations of the Confederation, cantons and communes on Sunday rest and on the opening hours of retail, catering and entertainment businesses. In short: the evening closing time is cantonal law, night and Sunday work is federal law.

That explains the ranking of the four categories. For sales outlets in railway stations that are public-transport centres on account of their heavy travel traffic, and in airports, Art. 27 para. 1ter ArG permits employment on Sundays. ArGV 2 Art. 26a implements this and declares Art. 4 para. 2 applicable «for the whole Sunday» — the night is deliberately not included. Which stations and airports these are is set out by name in the WBF ordinance of 16 June 2006 designating stations and airports (SR 822.112.1, as at 1 September 2019): its Art. 1 para. 1 lists 45 stations, among them Zürich Hauptbahnhof, Basel SBB, Bern, Genève, Lausanne and Lugano, and its para. 2 six airports, among them Zürich Kloten and Genève Cointrin.

Only the second group gets the night as well. Art. 26 ArGV 2 is headed «Kiosks, businesses for travellers and petrol-station shops». For kiosks and businesses for travellers, paragraph 2 grants the exemption «for the night until 1 o'clock» and «for the whole Sunday». For petrol-station shops on motorway service areas and on main routes with heavy travel traffic, paragraph 2bis grants it «for the whole night and the whole Sunday», mirroring Art. 27 para. 1quater ArG. A kiosk on a public street or square, by contrast, falls under paragraph 1 only and gets the Sunday alone, not the night.

What matters just as much is what this does not mean. These are labour-law exemptions, that is, permission to have someone working there — not a guarantee that any given shop uses the full window, and they do not override the cantonal opening-hours rule. In practice operators sit well below the ceiling: the station supermarkets verified below close at 21:00 or 22:00 even though permit-free evening work would run to 23:00 — and it is at exactly 23:00, no later, that the two airport branches close.

The definitions are in the same article. Businesses for travellers are sales outlets and service businesses at railway stations, airports, other public-transport terminals and in border towns whose range of goods and services is aimed primarily at the needs of travellers (para. 4). Tourist regions have their own provision, Art. 25 ArGV 2 — which is why a mountain resort in high season often keeps more generous hours than a suburb.

Zurich, Basel, Bern: the verified evening hours in the station

These three we checked on 3 August 2026 directly in the Migros store finder, branch by branch. This is the core of the page, and it is deliberately short: we only print hours we actually read that day on the chain's own branch page.

Sources: filialen.migros.ch for the three station branches, flughafen-zuerich.ch for the two airport branches, both retrieved 3 August 2026. Two things stand out. First, Basel opens earliest on weekdays, Zurich HB and Basel close latest, Bern runs an hour shorter. Second, all three are open on Sunday too, on the same hours as Saturday.

Geneva, Lausanne, Lugano: why there are no times here

Because we could not verify them, and this page does not guess. For Genève-Cornavin, Lausanne and Lugano stations the branch pages could not be retrieved reliably on 3 August 2026. What we can document is their legal status: Genève, Lausanne and Lugano are named individually in Art. 1 para. 1 of the WBF ordinance (SR 822.112.1) on the list of stations that count as public-transport centres — exactly like Zürich Hauptbahnhof, Basel SBB and Bern. The outlets inside them may therefore staff the whole Sunday under ArGV 2 Art. 26a. Expect Sunday trading and a late evening close, but check the actual time on the relevant chain's branch page before you set off.

One Geneva detail is verified, and it is a useful negative: the Genève Aéroport shop directory on 3 August 2026 listed just under 30 shops, including an «All you need Shop» — but neither a Migros nor a Coop supermarket. In Geneva, the airport is therefore not the address for an evening shop with a normal range. Cornavin station is the better bet.

Airport instead of station: the latest supermarket hours

If it is past 22:00 and you still want a real supermarket, Zurich Airport is the one address we can document with hours. Migros and Coop sit in the Airport Shopping area, in the public zone, so no boarding pass is needed, and both close at 23:00 per flughafen-zuerich.ch. The same directory lists Coop to go, k kiosk at seven locations, Press & Books at seven locations and an avec in The Circle on site.

The catch is the journey. An hour of travel for a litre of milk never pays off, however cheap the milk. The airport is worth it if you are already there or live nearby; otherwise the nearest station is almost always the better call.

Is shopping after closing time more expensive?

It depends which of the four categories you land in — which is exactly why it pays to look before rather than calculate afterwards. A Migros inside a station is an ordinary branch with the ordinary range and the ordinary weekly promotions. A kiosk or petrol-station shop carries, per Art. 26 ArGV 2, a range aimed «primarily at the needs of travellers», and for kiosks «predominantly press products, sweets, tobacco goods and souvenirs as well as small catering items». That is not a weekly-shop range, and it is not designed to compete on price with a supermarket.

We deliberately publish no percentage figure for the mark-up here. As of August 2026 we had no solid, dated study to cite for it, and an estimated number would be worse than none. What you can do instead is compare the base price. In Rappn you can see the price per kilo or per litre across more than 10,000 live offers from seven chains (Migros, Coop, Aldi Suisse, Lidl, Denner, Aligro, Otto's), and set a price-drop alert on the products you buy regularly. With the reference price in your head, you know instantly at the kiosk shelf whether it is worth it or whether it can wait until morning.

And morning is often the right answer, particularly on a Wednesday evening: Migros, Coop and Denner have started their weekly promotions on Thursday since 5 February 2026, while Aldi Suisse and Lidl Schweiz drop offers on Monday and Thursday. A purchase that ends up at a kiosk at 21:30 on Wednesday might have been part of the new promotion week in the same station supermarket on Thursday morning.

What about Sunday?

Sunday is the same mechanism, just spread over three articles: Art. 26a ArGV 2 for the shops in the designated stations and airports, Art. 26 para. 2 for kiosks and businesses for travellers, Art. 26 para. 2bis for the petrol-station shops on main routes. All three name «the whole Sunday». So it is the same four categories, and that is why all three verified station Migros branches ran Sunday hours identical to their Saturday hours. For the full picture including the cantonal quirks, see our guide to Sunday grocery shopping in Switzerland; the ordinary weekday hours are in Swiss supermarket opening hours.

So what does this mean for you? It depends

It depends on how far your nearest station is. If you live ten minutes' walk from a major station, you effectively have a normal supermarket at normal prices until 21:00 or 22:00 and almost never need the kiosk category. If you live further out, the petrol-station shop on a main route is the only category legally allowed to work through the night — at the cost of the narrowest range on the list.

It also depends on the day. An evening shop on Wednesday catches the tail of the old promotion week; one on Thursday evening catches the start of the new one. And it depends on the product: for fresh goods a late trip is often justified, for store-cupboard items almost never.

Next step: set up a shared shopping list in Rappn that your whole household can reach, and put price-drop alerts on the five to ten products that always run out at home. Then the restock lands in the trolley during the promotion week instead of at a kiosk at 21:30. Rappn is free, available in German, French, Italian and English, and is not paid by any retailer.