By plane

Çukurova Airport (COV IATA) is the nearest, 32 km west. It has frequent flights from Istanbul (both IST and SAW), Ankara and Izmir. It opened in 2024 and replaced Adana Airport, which was hemmed in by the city.

By bus

Buses from Istanbul run every couple of hours and take 13 hours via Ankara and Niğde, for a fare in 2023 of 350 TL.

Three buses a day take 5 hours from Konya. Two per day wind over the mountains from Antalya via Alanya, Taşucu (for Cyprus summer ferry), Silifke, Mersin and Tarsus.

One bus a day runs all the way from Van near the border with Iran, via Tatvan, Bitlis, Batman, Diyarbakır, Sanliurfa, Gaziantep and Osmaniye.

Bus operators on these routes are Metro Turizm and Flixbus.

1 Adana Otogarı the bus terminal is 4 km west of town on D-400; it's average-tatty. Taxis and minibuses will take you downtown.

By train

You can reach Adana same day from Istanbul or Ankara by taking the YHT high-speed train to Konya. Change there for the daily Toros Ekspresi, taking six hours via Karaman to reach Adana for 22:00. The return train leaves Adana before 08:00 and likewise connects at Konya with YHT trains to Istanbul and Ankara. The Karaman-Adana line is being upgraded for high-speed trains so disruptions may occur until this is complete (maybe by 2025) but in 2023 it's running normally.

There's also slower mainline trains such as Erciyes Ekspresi that runs daily from Kayseri, taking six hours via Niğde, and Fırat Ekspresi which runs daily from Elazığ, taking 13 hours via Malatya and Osmaniye. Finally there's an hourly regional train from Mersin (for ferries from Northern Cyprus) taking 90 min via Tarsus. Three trains per day continue to Iskenderun, taking 3 hours via Osmaniye.

Other routes are a tale of woe. The Cukurova Express sleeper from Ankara and trains from Gaziantep has been suspended for years or due to construction works. Former international routes from Syria and Iraq are closed indefinitely.

2 Adana railway station (Adana garı), Atatürk Cd (1 km north of city centre). Built in 1912 as a hub along the Berlin-Baghdad railway, an Ottoman-German collaboration which in its heyday carried Agatha Christie, Graham Greene, and the sort of louche characters that were forever getting murdered on the Orient Express. The station is quite nice but services are limited. (updated Jul 2023)

By road

From Ankara it's 500 km, say 5 hours, following O-21 motorway south then O-51 east. In 2022 the tolls totalled 163 TL.

O-52 runs east to Osmaniye, Gaziantep, Sanliurfa and Mardin by the Syrian border. West is a good highway past Mersin but then a narrow twisty road over the coastal mountains to reach the Med resort strip at Alanya.