The cheapest flights from Riga in 2026, ranked by real fares
Twelve destinations you can leave Riga for on a genuinely cheap one-way, ordered by the lowest fare we have actually measured on each route. Not an average and not a guess: the floor we saw, with the date we saw it.
Riga has the widest route map in the Baltics. It is airBaltic's home airport, the low-cost carriers fly it heavily, and the airport sits about ten kilometres from the centre, a city bus ride away. The practical effect is that Riga reaches more of Europe cheaply than either Vilnius or Tallinn, and a spontaneous weekend away is usually a question of picking, not searching.
The list below is twelve destinations we price from Riga on a schedule, ordered by the lowest one-way fare we have actually measured on each route. The number beside each entry is that floor, with the date we saw it. It is not the price you will pay for your dates; it is the bottom of what the route can do, which is the right yardstick for judging any quote you find. The order changes as fares move.
The twelve cheapest, ranked
Ordered by the lowest one-way we have measured, cheapest first. The fares and the order come from our measurements; the reasons to go are ours.
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01Oslo Torp NO from 15 € · seen 17 Aug 2026Read the airport name before you celebrate. Torp is more than a hundred kilometres south of Oslo and the coach in takes the better part of two hours each way. As a cheap way into Norway it still works, but count the coach fare and the hours, and remember that Norway on the ground is expensive whatever you paid to get there.
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02Kraków PL from 17 € · seen 17 Aug 2026The best city break on this list for the money. A medieval core that was never bombed flat, Kazimierz for the evenings, and the Wieliczka mine or Auschwitz within a day trip. Read the full Krakow guide before you book.
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03Manchester GB from 20 € · seen 17 Aug 2026The gateway to the north of England. Manchester itself is a solid two-day city of music history, football and serious curry, and Liverpool is under an hour away by train when you have seen it. Honest warning: it rains here even more than the reputation says.
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04Brussels Charleroi BE from 27 € · seen 17 Aug 2026Charleroi is Brussels' low-cost airport, about an hour south of the city by shuttle coach. Use it as the cheap door to Belgium rather than a Brussels city break: Bruges and Ghent are each a train ride from Brussels and both out-charm the capital.
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05Milan Bergamo IT from 28 € · seen 17 Aug 2026Lands at Bergamo, about fifty kilometres from Milan with a coach ride of an hour into Centrale. Either commute in for the Duomo and the aperitivo hour, or do the smarter thing and give your first evening to Bergamo's own walled upper town. The Milan guide covers the airport logistics honestly.
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06London Stansted GB from 28 € · seen 18 Aug 2026Stansted, not central London: the train in takes about fifty minutes and costs real money, so budget the transfer both ways. Once you are in, the great museums are free and a weekend needs no other tickets. The London guide is built around doing it cheaply.
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07Copenhagen DK from 38 € · seen 18 Aug 2026The nearest of the big Scandinavian capitals and the easiest airport on this list: the metro runs from the terminal to the centre in about fifteen minutes. Copenhagen on the ground is expensive, so the cheap flight is the part of the budget you can actually control.
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08Helsinki FI from 39 € · seen 18 Aug 2026The ferry-and-bus routes north make people forget Helsinki can be a cheap flight too, and for a weekend the flight buys you most of a day the boat would eat. Design shops, the fortress islands, and saunas taken seriously.
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09Stockholm Arlanda SE from 39 € · seen 18 Aug 2026Stockholm's main airport, with trains and coaches into town. The old town and the archipelago ferries make one of the best summer weekends in northern Europe; in winter you trade daylight for museum time and shorter queues.
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10Prague CZ from 59 € · seen 18 Aug 2026Prague's centre is as crowded as everyone says, and still worth it if you come off-season and start your mornings early. One of Europe's great walking cities with beer prices the rest of the continent envies. The full Prague guide has the honest version.
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11Malaga ES from 68 € · seen 18 Aug 2026The winter-sun pick. Malaga is a real city with a real old town, not just an airport for the resorts, and the coast works from autumn through spring when the north does not. The Malaga guide covers when to go and where to stay.
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12Budapest HU from 75 € · seen 18 Aug 2026Thermal baths, ruin bars and a riverfront built to impress, at prices that undercut western capitals once you land. Two or three nights is right. The Budapest guide says which bath and which district.
The shape of this list tells you something about flying from Riga. The cheapest entries are short hops on busy low-cost routes, not the famous sun destinations, and several floors sit within a few euro of each other, so the sensible way to choose is by the trip you want rather than the last euro of fare. Note also how many of the cheapest entries land at an airport a coach ride from the city they are named after; the transfer belongs in your arithmetic every time.
How to read this list
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01A floor is not a quoteEach figure is the cheapest fare we saw on the dates we priced, not what you will be offered for your dates. Use it to judge whether a live price is good, not as a promise.
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02The date matters as much as the numberEvery entry shows when we last measured it. A floor seen this week is a live benchmark; one seen weeks ago is history. Weigh them accordingly.
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03The cheap seats are the early onesThese floors go to people who book weeks ahead and flex on the exact day. Searching hard the night before does not find them, because by then they are gone.
If you are choosing between the Baltic airports rather than between destinations, we compared Vilnius against Kaunas route by route, and the same lesson applies here: the month you fly and how far ahead you book move the price more than the airport does.