Coburg is on the main rail line between Munich and Leipzig/Berlin. Direct trains run from Nuremberg (about 1 hour 20 minutes), from Munich (about 2 hours), and from Leipzig (about 1 hour 20 minutes). From Frankfurt the journey takes around 2 hours with one change. The station is a ten-minute walk south of the old town.
By car, Coburg sits just off the A73 autobahn between Nuremberg and Erfurt, about 85 kilometres north of Bamberg. The nearest airports with useful connections are Nuremberg and Frankfurt; Munich airport is also usable but considerably further. There is no direct airport in Coburg.
Coburg is a natural stop on a journey between Bavaria and Thuringia — it sits right on the old inner-German border, which ran just south of the town until 1990. The motorway crossing was one of the main transit points between West and East Germany, and the border history is part of the town's recent past.