Editor’ s note

2026 Annual Review & Outlook

By Mark Szakonyi

There’ s less new container ship tonnage scheduled to be delivered in 2026 than in 2025, but the impact to the market will be larger, both in terms of putting downward pressure on pricing and inching toward what some carrier executives say is inevitable: a significant idling of tonnage.

Signs that the absorption of the 1.8 million in TEUs of tonnage received last year from shipyards is reaching saturation are emerging as container demand slows. And unless shipowners significantly postpone or cancel orders, the wallops of new tonnage added in 2027 and 2028 will dwarf the deliveries made in 2025 and 2026, according to Sea-web, a sister product of the Journal of Commerce within S & P Global.

Some 1.48 million TEUs of tonnage are set to be delivered to shipowners in 2026, a 17.7 % decrease from what was received last year. But another 2.3 million TEUs of tonnage is due in 2027, with 3.4 million TEUs slated for delivery in 2028, which is roughly equal to all the tonnage received in 2022 and 2023.

Demand growth is going in the other direction. Global container volumes in 2026 will grow in the range of 2.5 % to 3.5 %, according to shipowner association Bimco. Comparably, container volume grew 4.5 % to 5.5 % in 2025 versus 2024.

Container lines and shipowners last year received roughly 155,000 TEUs of capacity from ultra-large container ships, which can handle more than 20,000 TEUs, and deployed them on the Asia – North Europe trade, according to Sea-web.

Global container volume growth in October 2025 fell to its slowest pace since February, expanding 2.1 % year over year, according to the most recent data from Container Trade Statistics. On a 20-month rolling average, global demand growth in October hit the lowest level in 20 months, according to Simon Heaney, senior manager of container research at Drewry.

Capacity absorbers

Port congestion in Europe and sporadically in Asia mitigated some of the overcapacity this year, and, to a lesser degree, China’ s widening import-export ratio is whittling some functional capacity. Last year began with congestion tying up at least 30 % of the global fleet, according to Clarkson’ s Port Congestion index, with the persistent and sporadic congestion in Europe and Asia, respectively, continuing through the year.

That absorption of functional capacity pales in comparison to the proverbial finger in the dike: Suez Canal routing diversions. If other carriers follow CMA CGM in regularly sailing through the Red Sea amid a shaky Gaza truce that is keeping Houthi rebels at bay, the industry can expect months of congestion, carriers and forwarders warn. That would only delay the return of functional capacity released by shorter sailings through the canal.

Slow steaming vessels could help absorb capacity on the margins, with each type of engine and vessel facing limits on how slow they can operate before becoming energy inefficient. Container ships sailing from Asia to North Europe on average were 21.7 % faster in the first three quarters of last year compared to the same period in 2018, according to an analysis of S & P Global’ s Maritime Emissions Registry.

Only idling and scrapping of aging vessels will blunt rising global overcapacity, barring nearly miraculous demand growth.

But, ultimately, only idling and scrapping of aging vessels will blunt the rising global overcapacity, barring nearly miraculous demand growth. As of mid-November, only 0.8 % of the global fleet, equating to about 273,000 TEUs, was idled, according to analyst Alphaliner.

Just a dozen ships, totaling 10,200 TEUs, were scrapped in 2025, according to an early December analysis of Sea-web data. Shipowners and carriers scrapped 19 times more TEU tonnage in 2019 and 2020, before the pandemicdriven US import surge showed how quickly overcapacity becomes emergency capacity.

But the cost analysis of keeping spare capacity is changing as carriers’ operating costs rise, rates soften and the benefits of extending the life of aging vessels to keep up with global energy and design regulations weaken. Strong idling and then ramped-up scrapping seem inevitable unless carriers have forgotten the recent benefits of pulling capacity fast, like in the spring 2020 when US import demand plunged at the outset of the pandemic before rocketing.

email: mark. szakonyi @ spglobal. com

4 Journal of Commerce | January 5, 2026 www. joc. com