SCNF tickets between Paris and Lyon

I found this online: Good news for train travelers! SNCF is announcing that tickets for the 2023 Christmas vacations will go on sale soon. From Wednesday, October 4, it will be possible to book your ticket on board TGV and Intercités trains for travel between Sunday, December 10, 2023 and Tuesday, January 9, 2024, and even until July 5 for Ouigo trains!

Here's the link: https://www.sortiraparis.com/en/news/in-paris/articles/261957-sncf-tgv-and-intercites-train-tickets-for-the-2023-christmas-vacations-soon-on-sale

It a commonly held - and commonly repeated - misbelief that tickets go on sale 90 days (or sometimes reported as 4 months) before the date of travel.

That has never been a hard and fast rule. IF the timetable for a period has been announced, tickets may be available up to 10 weeks in advance. In March, September and December that tends not to be the case, and it can be as little as 10 days before the start of a new timetable before tickets are released.

Most train tickets in europe get sold minutes, not months before travel. Train travel is not like air travel. It is mass transit.

For those trains that have compulsory reservation (and thus limited availability) it can happen that tickets sell out for a particular train, especially in countries where they simply don't run enough of them (like France). But trains selling out months in advance you can safely assume is a thing that just does not happen.

So there is no need to check every day if bookings have opened. My opinion is that you should not even start looking earlier than 40 days out or so.

I don't really agree that one should always wait until 40 days or so before a train to look for train tickets, in France anyway. I can't speak to Switzerland or other countries.

Sure, for regional and TER trains this makes total sense, and as mentioned you can wait until 40 minutes or even 4 minutes before if you like to buy.

But for long-distance trains in France, looking earlier than 40 days can have considerable upside, with little downside:

• By 40 days out, trains for popular dates/times (Fridays preceding holiday weekends, Sundays at the end of holidays, etc.) can have increased in price, and as other posters have confirmed, SNCF prices never go down -- they only get higher. If you already know when you are traveling -- which is going to be the case for the majority of North American travelers who have a relatively fixed/planned itinerary -- why not look earlier to benefit from potentially lower prices?
• And if plans do change or trips need to be canceled, SNCF long-distance trains -- with the important exception of "low-cost" Ouigo -- have pretty forgiving refund policies. All TGV Inoui and Intercité tickets are fully, 100% refundable up to 6 days before the trip, and even starting 6 days prior to the trip, the refund fee is a max of €19 (for TGV Inoui) or €15 (for Intercité trains).

I agree it's not worth looking extremely early, 6 months ahead of time, as the schedule is likely not even posted. But if you already know when you are going to travel, I think there's only upside (saving money) and very little downside (given the fully refundable nature of most tickets) to looking early.

The 10th is the first day of the new schedule. On the sunday after the 2nd saturday in December, all European railway companies update their schedules. And it can take some time for the tickets go on sale as many companies won't sell tickets until the schedule is set.