Olbrachtova Becomes Ryšánka, Náměstí Bratří Synků Becomes Nusle — and One Station Still Has No Name

Prague's city council approved the official names of the future metro D stations on 31 August, replacing the working names the line has carried since it was designed. Two of them change: the station working-named Náměstí Bratří Synků becomes Nusle, and Olbrachtova becomes Ryšánka. Everything else on the list keeps the name it already had.

The city will now ask the companies and organisations it owns or founds — DPP and ROPID above all — to use this sequence for the I.D section: Náměstí Míru, Nusle, Pankrác, Ryšánka, Nádraží Krč, Nemocnice Krč, Nové Dvory, Libuš, Písnice. The tenth station, working-named Depo Písnice, is the one loose end.

What the two sources disagree about

PID's release says a final decision on Depo Písnice "has for now been deferred", and describes the terminus name as hard to settle from the local geography — it will be decided once urban development around the station suggests something, with the naming commission's recommended Prameny listed as one possible alternative.

ČT24, reporting via ČTK, puts the same outcome differently: it says councillors rejected three proposed changes — Tempo for Nové Dvory, Sídliště Písnice for Písnice, and Prameny for Depo Písnice — and that those stations therefore keep their present names.

The practical effect is the same for Nové Dvory and Písnice. For the terminus it is not: one source has the name still open and Prameny still live, the other has Prameny turned down and Depo Písnice standing. We report both rather than pick.

Why the names moved

The changes were discussed and recommended by the city council's naming commission (místopisná komise) at meetings on 18 March and 15 June 2026 before the councillors took them up.

The published reasoning is specific to each station. Nusle unifies a station that will have two vestibules — on náměstí Bratří Synků and on Otakarova — under one geographically coherent, and shorter, name. Ryšánka is the name of the junction the southern vestibule opens onto, in use for decades since a tram line terminated there; the original Olbrachtova was taken from a fairly long street that runs all the way to Budějovická on line C, which made it worse for orientation. Michal Hroza, deputy mayor for infrastructure, added a second reason:

As a resident of Prague 4 I am glad that the Ryšánka stop will be named after the nearby former vineyard homestead, which dates from the middle of the 19th century.

— Michal Hroza, deputy mayor of Prague for infrastructure

ČT24 supplies the part the city's own release leaves out: the whole discussion started last year with a proposal to rename Olbrachtova, because critics objected to a station named after Ivan Olbracht, the journalist and writer, who was a communist and who took an active part in the Communist Party's rise to power after the Second World War.

For the others, the commission's logic is orientation rather than politics. Nové Dvory keeps its name because the city is preparing a whole new quarter of that name around the station, and Tempo — the historic name of a local housing colony — would be unfamiliar to passengers while being locked permanently into a tram terminus name. Písnice was preferred over the locally more precise Sídliště Písnice because the shorter name covers the wider area too. Náměstí Míru and Pankrác are taken from the existing line A and line C stations they interchange with; Nemocnice Krč is named for the Thomayer hospital complex and matches the adjacent bus stops.

Jaromír Beránek, deputy mayor for transport, described the vote as an information-system decision as much as a naming one:

Metro D will get its definitive form on maps too; it is an important step for unifying the whole information and navigation network of the capital.

— Jaromír Beránek, deputy mayor of Prague for transport

Names before trains

Nothing here is imminent. ČT24 notes that construction of the first part of the line, Pankrác to Olbrachtova — now Ryšánka — began in 2022, and that the first operating section, Pankrác to Nové Dvory, should open in the second half of 2032, worked by automatic trains. If DPP manages to build the stations in time, the line could run to Libuš or Písnice from the start.

The second section, from Ryšánka to Nové Dvory including tunnelling on to Písnice, was delayed by more than two and a half years by repeated challenges to the tender at the competition authority, and only started at the end of this June. The contract for building the Libuš and Depo Písnice stations is due to be advertised this September — which means the tender for the station will go out while its name is still undecided.