How to get from Guangzhou Baiyun Airport to Pazhou

Take the intercity rail line. It reaches a station in Pazhou directly from either terminal’s own transport hub, without a transfer — and it’s the one route almost nobody describes correctly yet, because it opened after most of the guides to this airport were written. The route those guides give instead depends on a metro station that closed along with Terminal 1, and following it now leaves you at a station where the trains no longer stop.

Pazhou is where the Canton Fair complex sits — the China Import and Export Fair, to use its formal name — and that’s most of the reason this particular route gets searched for at all. If a session is running or about to, the answer below still holds, but two more things start mattering: how the complex handles the crowd, and when it’s actually open.

Why the old directions are wrong

The route repeated across a dozen or more sites — government pages, freight forwarders, travel agencies — describes a metro trip through Airport South station on the way to Pazhou. That station served Terminal 1, and it closed along with the terminal in 2026: trains on that line now pass through without stopping. None of that changes how confidently the old instruction still gets printed. If a page you’re reading names Airport South as your starting point, it was written before this airport looked the way it does now.

Getting there from Terminal 2

Terminal 2 sits directly on the metro line at its own station, and it also has a stop on the newer intercity rail line, one level from the transport hub. The rail line is the one that reaches Pazhou without a change; the metro route into central Guangzhou is the more familiar path if Pazhou isn’t your actual destination.

Getting there from Terminal 3

Terminal 3 doesn’t sit on the metro directly — reaching it means a metro ride to Gaozeng station, then a free shuttle bus into the terminal’s transport hub, which is the route most people take into the city generally. For Pazhou specifically, the intercity rail line is the better answer: it has its own stop at the T3 transport hub, one level down from the terminal, and runs to Pazhou without the shuttle leg the metro option needs.

The airport runs its own shuttle to the pavilions, too

Alongside the rail line, the metro and a taxi or pre-booked car, the airport itself runs a direct service to the fairground pavilions — a counter for it sits in the arrivals area, not just a booth you might mistake for something else. It’s a legitimate option worth comparing against a taxi or a booked car rather than skipping over: on the figures available, it doesn’t come out obviously more expensive than either, and in some cases it lands squarely between them. Worth asking about at the counter rather than assuming a third-party transfer is automatically the better deal.

Terminal 1

Not applicable. Terminal 1 and the station beneath it both closed in 2026, and nothing about this route starts there any more.

If you’re carrying samples or Canton Fair materials

A buyer heading to or from a Canton Fair session often isn’t travelling light — sample cases, catalogues, sometimes purchased goods on the way out. The rail line and the metro shuttle are both built for a normal passenger load, not a cart of boxes, and neither is a comfortable way to move awkward luggage through a change of trains or a shuttle transfer. A car booked ahead is worth weighing here even for the daytime window when public transport is technically running, simply because it removes the luggage problem rather than routing around it.

The crowd matters as much as the luggage. On the morning a phase opens, the rail line and the metro shuttle both carry far more people than they do on an ordinary day — arriving with the general morning wave into a station built for regular traffic is a different experience from arriving on a quiet Tuesday. A car booked for a fixed time sidesteps that crush entirely; public transport doesn’t.

Canton Fair dates change the answer, not just the crowd

The complex runs in phases, and between them it closes to change over the exhibition — not a quiet day, closed. A buyer who lands in one of those changeover windows finds nothing to see, no matter how well the transport worked. That’s worth checking before the flight is booked, not after: it decides both which day to fly in on and how many nights to book a room in Pazhou for, and almost nothing written about this route mentions it at all.

What to watch out for

Public transport here stops running for the night, and the cutoff comes earlier than a delayed long-haul arrival might expect — see the way into the city for where that line sits. Past it, the rail line and the metro shuttle are both gone until morning, and a taxi or a car booked before you fly is what’s left. That’s worth planning around before you land, especially if your flight is due in during the evening and Pazhou is a fair-week destination where the hotel you booked is expecting you.

Travelling on the visa-free transit rule rather than a Chinese visa: Pazhou has its own passenger port, and it’s one of the eligible places to exit the country under that rule — see the transit page for the conditions.

Where to next

Prices climb hard in Pazhou during fair weeks and barely move anywhere else in the city — the Pazhou hotel page has the detail. If Pazhou turns out not to be where you’re headed after all, the transfers hub covers the rest of the region.