Stand on Storgata for a few minutes and you will hear it before you see it: a soft electric hum, a bell, then a long blue tram sliding past the shop windows. For many visitors the Oslo tram is the first thing that makes the city feel like a real place rather than a postcard.
It is also one of the oldest working parts of the capital. The rails under your feet have carried horses, two rival companies, a decades-long plan to tear everything up, and finally a brand-new fleet.
This is the story of how that network survived, and how to use it well on a visit today.
Horses, then electricity
Oslo's first tram ran in 1875, when the city was still called Kristiania. It was pulled by horses on flanged steel wheels, on a short line between Homansbyen, the old Oslo West station and a branch out to Grønland.
Three years later a line reached Grünerløkka, the fast-growing workers' district north-east of the centre. That early link still matters: trams have rattled through those streets ever since.
Electric service arrived in 1894 with a line over Briskeby to Majorstuen. By 1900 the horses were gone for good. The everyday word for the tram, trikken, comes from that change. It is short for elektrikk.
Green trams, blue trams
For years the city had two tram companies. One ran green and yellow cars and was known as Grønntrikken. The other painted its cars blue and was called Blåtrikken.
The nicknames came straight from the paintwork. The two companies merged in 1924, and the network kept growing through the 1910s, 1920s and 1930s.
The most dramatic addition was Ekebergbanen, a line climbing the hillside above the east side of the fjord. It opened to Sæter in 1917 and reached Ljabru in 1941. The network as a whole was at its largest in 1939, when a line to Sinsen opened in the north-east.
The decision to scrap it all
After the Second World War the mood turned. Buses were flexible and modern, and new metro lines took over some tram routes. Closures began in 1947, and in 1960 the city council decided to aim for a complete dismantling of the system.
Then, in 1977, the council changed its mind. Instead of closing the network it ordered new articulated trams, and the first of these, known as SL79, entered service in 1982.
The trams had one more scare. In 2002 a cash-strapped Oslo Sporveier proposed closing much of the network. Most of the cuts were reversed, but the line to Kjelsås did shut in November 2002. It reopened two years later, in November 2004.
At Kjelsås the old tram shed still stands beside the stop. It was designed by Carl Vorbeck in a functionalist style, stopped housing trams in 1957 and has been a culture house for young people since 2002.
The new blue trams
If you visited Oslo a few years ago, you may remember a mix of older cars, some with steep steps at the doors. That fleet is now history.
In 2018 Oslo ordered 87 new trams from the Spanish manufacturer CAF. Known as SL18, they are bi-directional and fully low-floor, which makes them far easier to board with a pram, a suitcase or a wheelchair. The first passengers rode them on a trial service from January 2022.
The last of the Italian-built SL95 trams was retired in April 2025, and the last SL79 followed in September 2025. Every tram you board in normal service today is an SL18, numbered from 401 to 487.
The switch did change one route. The new trams are not approved to run on metro tracks, so line 13 was cut back to Lilleaker in 2024 instead of continuing out to Bekkestua in Bærum.
Reading the Oslo tram map
Ruter, the city's public transport authority, currently runs six tram lines: 12, 13, 15, 17, 18 and 19. The easiest way to understand them is in pairs that share long stretches of track.
Lines 12 and 15 both run between Kjelsås and Majorstuen, through Storo, Torshov and Grünerløkka to Jernbanetorget by the central station. West of the centre they split. Line 15 goes via Nationaltheatret, while line 12 swings down to Aker Brygge.
Lines 17 and 18 cross the centre to the university area at Blindern and continue north-west towards Gaustad. Lines 13 and 19 share Ekebergbanen, climbing from Bjørvika up past the hillside sculpture park to Ljabru.
Ruter publishes an official line map and timetables as PDFs on its website, and the Ruter app shows live departures for every stop. On the central stretches, where several lines overlap, you rarely wait more than a few minutes.
Tram 12: a sightseeing route for the price of a ticket
If you only ride one tram, make it line 12. Starting at Majorstuen, it runs past Frogner stadion and stops at Vigelandsparken, the gate to the sculpture park. You can read more about that landscape in our story of Frogner Park and the manor estate behind the Vigeland sculptures.
From there it rolls through the elegant apartment streets of Frogner to Solli and down to Aker Brygge. It is the only tram line that stops at the waterfront there.
It then crosses the centre to Jernbanetorget and heads north up Storgata and through Grünerløkka. Get off at Olaf Ryes plass or Birkelunden if you want cafés, parks and the old mill buildings along the river, covered in our walk through Grünerløkka's street life along the Akerselva.
Stay on and the tram climbs to Kjelsås at the edge of the forest. In one ride you have seen the city's west end, its harbour and its old working-class east side.
Up the hill on Ekebergbanen
Lines 13 and 19 give you a very different ride. After Bjørvika they pass Middelalderparken, where the ruins of the medieval town lie, then begin to climb the slope above the harbour.
Within minutes you are at the Ekebergparken stop, with the fjord opening up below. It is the easiest way to reach the hilltop park, which we wrote about in Ekebergparken: Oslo's sculpture park on the hill above the old town.
Beyond the park the line runs on its own track through quiet residential neighbourhoods towards Holtet, Sæter and Ljabru. It feels more like a small hill railway than a city tram.
Oslo tram tickets
There are no ticket sales on board Oslo's trams, and there are no gates either. You need a valid ticket before you step on, and inspectors carry out spot checks.
The simplest option is the Ruter app, where you can pay by card or Vipps. An adult single ticket for zone 1, which covers the whole city centre, costs NOK 46 and is valid for 60 minutes, including transfers. Ruter also sells 24-hour and 7-day tickets.
If you prefer something physical, a reusable travel card costs NOK 50 at Narvesen, 7-Eleven and Mix kiosks, or at Ruter's customer centre at Jernbanetorget.
The same ticket works on the metro, buses, the harbour ferries and Vy's local trains within the zones you have paid for. That makes it easy to combine a tram ride with a boat out to the islands.
The Oslo tram museum
To see where all of this began, head to Majorstuen. Sporveismuseet, the Oslo transport museum, sits in an old depot hall at Gardeveien 15, a short walk from the tram and metro stops.
It holds Norway's largest collection of vintage trams and buses, and you can step inside many of them. There are also displays on the history of the network and a collection of old tickets.
The museum is run by volunteers from a local transport history society. It is open on Saturdays, Sundays, Mondays and Tuesdays from 11:00 to 15:00, and closed on public holidays.
The old trams do not only live indoors. Tram no. 70, built in Hamburg in 1913 for the green tram company and restored in 1994, is sometimes brought out for special trips, so it is worth keeping an eye out on summer weekends.
A few habits that help
Let people off before you board, and press the button by the door if it does not open on its own. Check the destination display on the front, since lines that share a stretch can split a few stops later.
Look both ways when crossing tracks. Trams are quiet, and in the narrow streets of the centre they come closer to the pavement than you might expect.
Most of all, take a window seat. The Oslo tram has been carrying the city's daily life for more than 150 years, and it remains one of the best ways to watch it go by.
About Sofia Berg
Sofia Berg is a lifelong Oslo resident and travel writer with a passion for uncovering the city's hidden gems. She has been exploring and writing about Oslo for over ten years.