Vienna Airport Terminal Map (VIE)
The thing that confuses most people at Vienna International Airport is that the building you check in at is not the building your gate is named after. VIE has three check-in areas – Terminals 1, 1A and 3 – but five gate concourses, lettered B, C, D, F and G, spread across three piers. Once you are through security, the letter on your boarding pass is the only thing that matters. This page is the decoder. Details are current for August 2026; the gate shown on your boarding pass and on the airport's own flight information displays is always the binding one, because gates get reassigned on the day.
The whole layout in one table
| Concourse | Where it is | Zone | Gate numbers | Check in at |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| B | Ground level | Schengen | B31–B42 | Terminal 1 / 1A |
| C | Pier West | Schengen | C21–C75 | Terminal 1 / 1A |
| D | Pier East | Non-Schengen | D21–D70 | Terminal 1 / 1A |
| F | Pier North, Level 1 | Schengen | F01–F75 | Terminal 3 |
| G | Pier North | Non-Schengen | G01–G67 | Terminal 3 |
Read the table the other way round and it becomes a rule of thumb: a gate letter of B, C or D means you are on the Terminal 1 side of the airport; F or G means you are on the Terminal 3 side. Both sides handle Schengen and non-Schengen flights – the border is drawn at the concourse, not at the check-in hall, which is exactly the detail that trips people up.
The three check-in areas
Check-in at Vienna Airport happens in Terminals 1, 1A and 3. There is no check-in in Terminal 2.
Terminal 3 is the newest and largest of them. It opened on 5 June 2012 after a long and famously troubled construction as the Skylink project, and it is also called the Austrian Star Alliance Terminal because Austrian Airlines and its Star Alliance partners are based there. It lifted the airport's design capacity to about 30 million passengers a year – which matters, because VIE actually handled 32,559,135 passengers in 2025, up 2.6 % on the year before. Terminal 3 feeds Pier North, so its gates are the F and G concourses.
Terminal 1 is the other main check-in hall, and it feeds concourses B, C and D. Terminal 1A is a separate, smaller building standing opposite Terminal 1 rather than attached to the main complex. It was put up in 2005 as a temporary facility and is still in service, typically for leisure and charter carriers. If your airline says 1A, allow an extra few minutes: it is a short walk across from the main building, not a different door in the same hall.
Terminal 2 is the odd one out and the source of a lot of confusion. It is the oldest part of the airport, completed in 1960 and refurbished between 2016 and 2022. You cannot check in there. In today's layout it functions as the entrance to concourses C and D – effectively a connector, not a terminal in the usual sense. If a booking site tells you “Terminal 2”, treat it as the Terminal 1 side of the airport and follow the gate letter. Our Vienna Airport terminals guide covers what each check-in hall contains.
Schengen and non-Schengen – what actually changes
Austria is in the Schengen Area, so the split decides whether you pass a border control on the way to your gate. Concourses B, C and F serve Schengen destinations: after security you walk straight to the gate, no passport check. Concourses D and G serve non-Schengen destinations, and you clear passport control before entering. On the Pier East side, that control sits at the entrance to the pier and is shared by the whole D concourse, so it is a single queue for everyone heading that way.
This is the part worth budgeting time for. A priority security product does not help here – passport control is a state border function and has its own queue regardless of what you bought. See FastTrack at Vienna Airport for what priority security does and does not cover, and how early to arrive at Vienna Airport for the timings the airport itself recommends.
How the buildings fit together
Terminals 1, 2 and 3 are built directly against each other and form one continuous structure, so you can move between them on foot, landside, without going outside – escalators, lifts and moving walkways run the length of the complex. Terminal 1A is the exception: it stands on its own opposite Terminal 1 and needs a short outdoor crossing.
The practical consequence for a connecting passenger is that the walk itself is rarely the problem at VIE; it is a compact airport by hub standards. What costs time is changing zone – a Schengen arrival continuing on a non-Schengen departure has to clear passport control between the two, and an arrival from outside the EU continuing onward may have to re-clear security. If your connection crosses concourses and zones – say a C arrival to a G departure – treat the published minimum connection time as a floor, not a target. Live gate and time information is on our arrivals and departures boards.
Getting your bearings before you fly
Three habits save more time than any map does. Check the gate letter, not the terminal number, the moment you have a boarding pass – it tells you which half of the airport you need. Re-check the screens after security, because gate reassignments at VIE usually stay within a concourse but not always. And if you are flying from Terminal 1A, factor in the crossing from the main building.
The airport publishes its own interactive plans and downloadable level maps on the official terminals and maps page, which is the authority if anything here and the signage ever disagree. For everything else on the ground – where to eat, where to sit, where to sleep – see our Vienna Airport guide, the lounges page, and the sleeping pods page.