Abstract Planning and designing railway tunnels with an explicit reference to safety issues is becoming of utmost importance since the combination of high speed, mixed goods–passenger traffic and extreme length of the new tunnels under design or concept evaluation, have sensitively modified the inherent safety of the railway tunnel. Although the probability of occurrence of accidental events may still be considered rather low, the possible consequences of such events in long tunnels can be catastrophic, therefore raising the overall risk to levels that may be no more acceptable. The scope of this paper is to illustrate the state-of-practice related to risk analysis of long railway tunnels. First, ambitious tunnel projects are briefly reviewed. The applicable risk-analysis procedures are then described and discussed. The problem of risk appraisal is addressed and quantitative target safety levels are proposed. Safety systems for risk reduction are outlined.