Colmar sits on the main Strasbourg–Basel railway line; TGVs from Paris Gare de l'Est take just under three hours, hourly regional trains to Strasbourg run in 30 minutes, and Mulhouse and Basel in Switzerland are 40 minutes south. The station is a ten-minute walk west of the old town.
The nearest airports are EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg, 60 kilometres south, and Strasbourg-Entzheim, an hour north. A small regional airport at Colmar-Houssen handles only general aviation. By road, the A35 motorway runs along the Rhine plain just east of the city, linking to the German A5 across the border at Neuf-Brisach.