Luggage transfer on the Camino de Santiago

In the pilgrim groups, "which company carries the backpack?" shows up several times a week and in three or four languages at once. The useful answer is not a name: they all do the same thing, on near-identical timings, and the difference lies in conditions none of them spells out on the front page. This is what we checked on 25 August 2026 by reading each operator's own site.

The mechanics are the same almost everywhere

The service is called "stage to stage" because that is literally what it does: it collects your bag at the accommodation where you slept and leaves it at the next one you name. With Correos, the operator whose conditions are best published, the day runs like this:

• You book before 20:00 the day before each transfer, online or by email. If you have not booked online, there are paper envelopes at the accommodations themselves.
• You label the bag with the tag they email you. If you cannot print it, a piece of paper with your details will do.
• You leave it at reception before 08:00, or wherever the hospitalero tells you.
• You pick it up at the far end before 14:30. The service runs every day, Sundays and public holidays included.

Two limits worth checking before you book: 15 kg per bag and a maximum transfer distance of 60 km a day. If you walk double stages —more common than you would think between Burgos and León— that second limit applies to you and has to be arranged separately by email. Cancellation is free until the day before you start.

The price, and why you can't find it

Because hardly anyone publishes it. On the Correos site the amount only appears at the end of the form, once you have picked route, dates and stages; until then the basket reads €0.00. The local companies work mostly by phone and with the paper envelope, so they have no rate card either. The range the industry works with is €5 to €7 a stage, and the most concrete published figures we found are Pilbeo's: €7 for a single stage and €30 for the complete Sarria-to-Santiago package, which works out at about €6 a stage when bought as a bundle.

For a quick estimate: five stages from Sarria come to roughly €25-35, and a full Camino Francés from Saint-Jean, at more than thirty stages, goes well past €150. That is enough money to put in the budget from the start rather than decide halfway across the Meseta, which is when most people start thinking about it.

"I don't know yet where I'll be sleeping"

This is the most common objection, and it has a clear answer: to book, you only need the first day's accommodation. The remaining stages are filled in later, from inside your own booking, with the same 20:00 cut-off the day before each transfer. You can leave home without knowing where you will sleep on night four.

What Correos does require, and it is worth reading twice, is that you have a reservation at that accommodation, or its explicit permission to leave your bag there. And that is the real clash almost nobody mentions: transfer pushes you into booking, and booking takes you out of the Xunta's public albergue network, which costs €10, works first-come first-served and does not take reservations. Walking bagless and sleeping in the €10 network are, in practice, two plans that pull against each other. If you want both, the formula is booking private albergues —€14 to €22 a bunk— and accepting the difference. The exception is Pilbeo, which does not ask for a confirmed bed.

Backpack or suitcase?

Every operator takes suitcases, not just backpacks, but with caveats. Correos accepts a "backpack or cabin bag" up to 15 kg, so a full-size checked suitcase is out. Jacotrans says it carries backpacks, suitcases and any item between partner accommodations. Pilbeo raises the limit to 20 kg. If you have come off a long-haul flight and your luggage fits none of those boxes, the answer is not daily transfer: it is sending the suitcase straight to Santiago and collecting it at the end. Correos runs a left-luggage office at Rúa do Franco 4, two minutes from the Obradoiro, with a discount for Paq Mochila users; that and the other last-day options are in how to leave Santiago.

And if what you have is surplus kilos halfway along —the classic case: three weeks walking and a bag of things you have never touched— any post office on the route will send it on to Santiago or home, walking poles included. Poles have their own shipping service precisely because they are what causes most trouble on the flight home.

When there is no service at all

This is the part that surprises anyone walking outside summer. Paq Mochila runs from Easter to 31 October on the Francés from Roncesvalles, the Português from Porto, the Coastal Português from A Guarda, the Spiritual Variant, the Primitivo from Oviedo, the Norte from Irún, the Inglés from Ferrol, the Sanabrés from Ourense and the way to Finisterre and Muxía. Outside those dates only Sarria–Santiago and Tui–Santiago remain, the two stretches with year-round demand. The Francés from Somport and the Camino de Invierno are handled on request at paqmochila@correos.com. If you walk in November or February, plan on carrying your own pack: it is one of the many things that shut down out of season.

What can go wrong, and how to avoid it

• Arriving before your bag. If you walk short stages and get in at one in the afternoon, your bag may not be there yet: the commitment is "before 14:30", not "mid-morning".
• The accommodation that won't take it. Public albergues that don't accept bookings have no obligation to store bags for people who have not arrived. If you are using transfer, ask when you book, not when you show up.
• Sundays and holidays. The service does run, but a small albergue may have nobody on reception at eight in the morning. Talk to the hospitalero the night before and leave the bag where they tell you.
• Booking late. The 20:00 deadline the day before is real, not a suggestion. If you remember at eleven at night, that transfer is gone.

Our take, in one line

Transfer is not cheating —that argument is fairly worn out by now— but it is not free in terms of freedom either: it forces you to decide the night before where you will sleep. If that doesn't bother you, it takes six to eight kilos off your back for the price of a set menu. If what you like about the Camino is stopping wherever you feel like, cut the weight instead of outsourcing it.