- On the Asia-North Europe trade, shipping lines have scheduled 1.50 million teu of capacity in the four weeks around China’s Golden Week, up 27% on 2025 and 60% above the 2017-2019 average. According to Sea-Intelligence, much of the increase results from delayed vessels being rescheduled alongside regular services.
- No blank sailings are currently scheduled for Golden Week or the following week, but Sea-Intelligence expects late capacity cuts and rolled cargo in mid- and late October, once the backlog has been cleared and Chinese exports slow. On the Asia-Mediterranean trade, scheduled capacity is up 49%.
- Reliability remains extremely low: Xeneta reports that in August only 6% of vessels on the Far East-Europe trade arrived on time, with an average delay of 8.2 days. Typhoons disrupted Shanghai, Ningbo and Yantian, while congestion in Asia is effectively removing around 3 million teu, or 8.5% of the world container fleet, from the market.
Never has there been so much vessel capacity on paper and so little certainty over actual departure dates. In the four weeks around China’s Golden Week, which this year runs from 1 to 7 October 2026, shipping lines have scheduled 1.50 million teu of capacity on the Asia-North Europe trade: 27% more than in the same period of 2025 and 60% above the 2017-2019 average, according to Sea-Intelligence data. In its report published on 23 September, however, the Danish consultancy warns freight forwarders to regard the schedule as provisional and subject to blank sailings, delays and cargo being rolled to subsequent departures. The peak will occur during Golden Week itself, when capacity will be 63% higher than last year, followed by the subsequent week at +39%. During those two weeks, Sea-Intelligence counts twelve instances of double sailings on the same service. This is not a deliberate commercial decision by the carriers: the increase largely stems from delayed vessels being rescheduled into the same windows as regular services. The result is a temporary concentration of sailings and nominal capacity that is likely to disappear once the backlog has been cleared.
This is where the analysis identifies the main risk. The current schedule includes no blank sailings during Golden Week or the following week, just as Chinese factory closures are set to reduce export volumes, which have already been compressed by the proximity of the Mid-Autumn Festival, held from 25 to 27 September. Sea-Intelligence therefore considers late and disorderly carrier action likely in mid- and late October, with sailings cancelled at short notice, port calls omitted and containers left on the quay.
The situation is even more pronounced on the Asia-Mediterranean trade, which directly serves Italian ports. Scheduled capacity over the same period reaches 1.14 million teu, up 49% year on year and 141% above the pre-pandemic average, according to Sea-Intelligence. Another factor is the partial return of services to the Suez Canal, if the geopolitical situation allows it, a trend that is currently more pronounced on return voyages from the Mediterranean to Asia than on services from Northern Europe. Returning to the shorter route reduces round-voyage times and releases capacity that, during the Red Sea crisis, was - and to a large extent still is - tied up on diversions around the Cape of Good Hope.
Xeneta points out that container shipping schedule reliability is going through one of its most critical phases since the end of the pandemic. Its analysts found that in August just 6% of vessels on the Far East-Europe trade arrived on schedule, ten percentage points fewer than in July, with an average delay of 8.2 days. Xeneta compares these figures with those recorded at the end of 2021. Sea-Intelligence’s series, based on a July-August moving average and a different methodology, puts schedule reliability on the Asia-North Europe trade at 62.3%, down 2.4 percentage points, and on the Asia-Mediterranean trade at 61.8%, down 3.7 points.
The delays originate in ports across north-eastern Asia, where as many as four typhoons have hit China. According to Xeneta, in the week following Typhoon Saudel, 1.1 million teu of capacity was waiting in the Shanghai, Ningbo and Yantian areas. Shanghai and Ningbo are recording schedule reliability of between 12% and 17%, with arrivals eight to nine days late, while all fourteen major Asian ports have seen reliability deteriorate. Globally, according to another Sea-Intelligence analysis, delays and disruption are absorbing around 3 million teu, equivalent to 8.5% of total container shipping capacity. In August, global schedule reliability fell below 50%, while the average delay for late vessels rose to 6.8 days, a level exceeded only during the worst phases of the pandemic.
Europe is also contributing to the delays. At Northern European ports, large container ships are spending longer alongside, terminals are congested and inland transport is under pressure, while the coexistence of services that have returned to Suez and others still routed around Africa is making rotations less consistent. On the Transpacific, where scheduled capacity to the US West Coast reaches 1.49 million teu (+18%), with seven double sailings in week 40 and eleven in week 41, carriers have already begun adjusting supply. MSC has cancelled a week 41 sailing on its Emerald service between Asia and the US East Coast, while Maersk will suspend its additional TPX service after the departure of Maersk Boston from Vung Tau, scheduled for 29 September.
Mara Gambetta
