Budapest Ferenc Liszt International Airport looks confusing on paper — Terminal 1, Terminal 2, 2A, 2B, SkyCourt — and is simple in practice: every scheduled flight uses one building, Terminal 2, and the only question that matters is which half of it you need. This guide explains what is in each half, how you move between them, why your boarding pass may say 2A when the check-in desk is somewhere else entirely, and what the billion-euro rebuild that started this year changes for passengers now.
How many terminals does Budapest Airport have?
One in passenger use. Terminal 2 handles all scheduled traffic and is split into two connected piers — Terminal 2A and Terminal 2B — joined by the SkyCourt, a five-storey central building that opened in March 2011 and holds security, the main shops and restaurants and most of the lounges.
Terminal 1, the small art-deco building 2 km away that low-cost airlines used until 2012, has handled no scheduled flights since the collapse of MALÉV Hungarian Airlines. It is not a terminal you can fly from, whatever an old guidebook or a badly built booking page tells you.
| Building | Status | What it handles |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal 2A | Active | Schengen departures and arrivals |
| Terminal 2B | Active | Non-Schengen departures and arrivals |
| SkyCourt | Active | Central security, shops, food, lounges — shared by both piers |
| Terminal 1 | Closed to flights since 2012 | Events venue; no check-in, no gates |
Which pier is yours — and why your airline does not decide it
This is the one rule worth learning: your pier follows your destination, not your airline. The same Wizz Air aircraft type leaves from 2A on a Vienna rotation and from 2B on a London one, because the split is a border split, not a commercial one.
| Flying to or from | Pier | Passport control |
|---|---|---|
| Schengen area — Germany, Austria, Italy, Spain, Poland, Czechia… | 2A | None in either direction |
| United Kingdom and Ireland | 2B | Yes |
| United States, Canada, Gulf states, Türkiye, Asia | 2B | Yes, plus EES registration for non-EU travellers |
Two consequences people trip over. A Schengen departure has no border queue, so the only stop between the kerb and the gate is security. And a non-Schengen departure clears passport control after security, on the way into the B pier — a second queue that has to be in your timing. Our guide to how early to arrive builds both cases into an arrival time.
Terminal 2A — the Schengen pier
2A serves flights within the Schengen area: most of the Wizz Air and Ryanair European network, and the Lufthansa group, Air France-KLM and LOT rotations to their hubs. Gates are numbered in the A range.
Because there is no border check, the pier is deliberately lean — a handful of cafés, a newsagent and seating. The serious food and shopping happen earlier, in the SkyCourt, and it is a mistake to walk through to A and hope for a proper meal at the gate. On the arrivals side, a Schengen flight goes straight from the aircraft to the baggage belts, which is why passengers off a 2A flight can be at the kerb within 15–20 minutes of landing if they carry hand luggage only.
Terminal 2B — the non-Schengen pier
2B handles everything outside the Schengen area: the UK and Ireland, the transatlantic services to Philadelphia and Toronto, the Gulf carriers, Turkish Airlines, and the Chinese and Korean long-haul routes. Gates are in the B range, and the pier was extended in 2018 to take the larger aircraft those routes bring.
The pier has its own duty-free run and its own lounge, which matters more than it sounds: once you have crossed passport control into 2B you cannot go back to the Schengen side. A lounge pass, a restaurant reservation or a shop you meant to visit on the shared level is unreachable from here. Do the SkyCourt first, then clear the border.
On arrival the order is reversed — passport control, then the belts — and that is the whole reason a non-Schengen arrival takes 35–50 minutes to reach the arrivals hall against 15–20 for a Schengen one.
SkyCourt: the building that actually holds the airport
The SkyCourt sits between the two piers and is where almost everything worth knowing about happens. Central security screening is here, and above it a five-level atrium with the main shopping and food court, the lounge mezzanine and the walkway that links 2A and 2B airside.
The practical point: the SkyCourt is before the Schengen / non-Schengen split, so everything in it is available to every departing passenger regardless of pier. Plan to spend your waiting time here rather than at the gate, and treat the walk to the gate as the last ten minutes of your visit, not the first.
Getting between 2A and 2B
There is no shuttle bus and no second building to reach — the two piers are ends of one terminal. Airside, you walk between them through the SkyCourt in a few minutes, subject to the border rule above: from 2A you can walk to 2B by clearing passport control, but you cannot walk back.
Landside, the question rarely comes up, because check-in for both piers is in the same departures hall on the upper level. If someone tells you to "go to Terminal 2B to check in", the desks are in the same hall as 2A's — only the airline's desk block differs. Arrivals for both piers also empty into a single hall, so anyone meeting a flight waits in one place whatever the origin.
Check-in, bag drop and security
Check-in desks and self-service kiosks are on the upper departures level, shared between the piers. Counters generally open two hours before departure and — the number that strands people — close 30 minutes before scheduled departure, and 40 minutes before for low-cost carriers. Several full-service airlines close earlier still, at 45 to 60 minutes, so the deadline that governs your morning is your airline's, not the airport's.
Security is central, in the SkyCourt, for both piers. Budapest still enforces the 100 ml liquid limit — every liquid, gel and aerosol in a container of 100 ml or less, all of them together in one transparent one-litre bag. Some European airports have relaxed this on new scanners; BUD has not. One local detail in your favour: you do not need to take laptops, tablets or cameras out of your bag here. Details in our security and liquid rules guide.
The airport sells a Fast Track lane at security for 2,800 HUF or 7 EUR per person, free for anyone travelling with a child under three, from the yellow kiosks in the departure halls or online in advance. Whether it is worth it depends entirely on the hour — see the Fast Track guide.
Arriving: belts, border and the meeting point
Baggage reclaim sits on the arrivals level below departures, with the belts shared by both piers. Non-Schengen arrivals pass Hungarian passport control on the way down; since the EU Entry/Exit System came in, non-EU travellers are registered biometrically instead of stamped, and the first registration takes longer than a stamp did. Our EES guide explains who this applies to.
Past the belts everything is in one arrivals hall: exchange desks and ATMs, car rental counters, the transport desks and the exit to the kerb. Two warnings for people meeting a flight. The exchange rates in the arrivals hall are the worst you will see all trip, and the pick-up parking in front of the terminal is charged in short steps designed to move cars along — check the current tariff in our parking guide before you settle in to wait. What the whole route looks like end to end is in the arrival guide.
Terminal 1: closed, and not coming back
Terminal 1 opened to low-cost airlines in 2005 and closed to scheduled traffic in 2012. The airport has since decided not to reopen it for passenger flights: running two passenger buildings 2 km apart would split operations and create a two-tier pricing structure. It was pressed into service once, for the surge around a UEFA Champions League final, and that was explicitly a one-off.
The building itself is protected architecture and is used for events. If a booking site, an old blog or a taxi driver sends you to Terminal 1 for a flight, it is wrong — and the mistake is expensive, because it is a 2 km drive from the passenger terminal with no walking route worth attempting with luggage.
Terminal Plus: the rebuild that started in 2026
Budapest handled 19.6 million passengers in 2025, 11.7% more than the year before, in a terminal built for far less. In February 2026 the airport laid the foundation stone of "Terminal Plus", a one-billion-euro, decade-long development programme.
| Element | Scale |
|---|---|
| New main terminal | 35,000 m², centralised check-in, reorganised security, integrated retail |
| New passenger pier | 19,000 m² |
| Apron expansion | 132,000 m², 13 new aircraft stands and a de-icing facility |
| Terminal 2 upgrades | Check-in reconfiguration, security improvements, Pier B expansion |
| Landside | Car parks, road network and kerbside rebuilt |
| Added capacity | More than 10 million passengers a year |
For the next few years the visible part is landside: construction traffic, changed access roads and reorganised car parks around the terminal. Nothing about the 2A / 2B split changes in the meantime, but if you drive to the airport, allow extra time and check your car park is where it was last time. The airport has been in Hungarian state ownership since June 2024, with Vinci Airports holding 20% and operating under a concession that runs to 2080.
Food, shops and lounges by zone
Almost everything is in the SkyCourt, before the border split, and that is the single most useful thing to know about spending time at BUD. The food court, the main duty-free run and the shared lounge mezzanine — the SkyCourt Lounge and the Mastercard Lounge — are all usable whichever pier you fly from. Beyond the split each pier keeps a smaller offer of its own: the 2A Platinum Lounge near Gate A8 and its 2B counterpart above Gate B7.
Walk-in lounge access runs around 15,600–15,840 HUF (≈ €39) for two hours and does not require a business-class ticket — but a Schengen-side lounge is useless once you have cleared into 2B, so check the zone before you pay. See our lounges guide, where to eat and duty-free guide. If you are between flights with real time to fill, the layover guide covers what is reachable and what is not.
Getting to the terminal
All roads, buses and taxis stop at the same place: the kerb in front of Terminal 2. BUD is about 16 km southeast of the centre, and the fastest public option is the 100E Airport Express at HUF 2,500, roughly 40 minutes to Deák Ferenc tér, running 24/7. The cheapest is bus 200E plus metro M3 on an 850 HUF 90-minute ticket — note that a 500 HUF single covers one ride on one vehicle and does not allow the transfer. An official Főtaxi ride runs about HUF 13,000–15,000 (≈ €36–41), on a meter that opens at 2,100 HUF for airport journeys.
Full comparison in our airport-to-city transport guide, private cars in the transfers guide, and live boards on the departures and arrivals pages.