Suez Is Coming Back, Panama Is Tightening: What 2026 Routing Actually Looks Like

Two things are happening to the world’s ocean routing at the same time, and they point in opposite directions. Asia–Europe traffic is starting to come back through the Suez Canal after two years around the Cape of Good Hope. Meanwhile the Panama Canal is tightening draft and transit slots again.

For anyone planning ocean freight in the next two quarters, both matter — and neither is as settled as the headlines suggest.

The Red Sea: a selective return, not a switch

Carriers have begun testing Suez transits again. Maersk has run successful test voyages and announced full-loop Suez transits returning on a service; MSC has resumed Red Sea transits on several services; ONE has launched a Red Sea–China service. Roughly a fifth of westbound Asia–Europe capacity has been routed through Suez, and some analysts expect that share to rise substantially through the year.

But “selective” is the operative word, and the reversals prove it. CMA CGM announced a return and then reversed the decision. Hapag-Lloyd has stayed cautious. Carriers are not restoring whole networks — they are routing individual strings through Suez where the operational gain outweighs the risk, and keeping the Cape as the default elsewhere.

What that means for a shipper: do not plan a Q4 schedule on the assumption your specific service has switched. Ask which routing your booking actually takes. Two containers on the same trade lane, booked the same week with different carriers, can now differ by a week or more in transit.

The second-order effect nobody enjoys: congestion

Here is the part worth planning around. A large-scale return does not smooth things out — at first it does the opposite.

Vessels that have been spread across a longer Cape rotation arrive at European hubs closer together. That means port congestion and short, sharp rate spikes at exactly the moment the routing is supposedly improving. Once the bunching clears, the picture inverts: over two million TEU of effective capacity comes back into a market that was already oversupplied, which is downward pressure on rates.

So the honest planning advice is a barbell. Expect volatility and possible delays at European gateways in the near term; expect softer rates once the transition works through. Neither is a reason to change your whole strategy, but both are reasons not to lock a long position on the basis of this week’s number.

Panama: tightening again

While Suez loosens, Panama constricts. The Panama Canal Authority has been adjusting the maximum authorised draft for the Neopanamax locks downward through August and September 2026, citing below-expected precipitation in the canal watershed, and has been postponing and re-scheduling the steps as conditions move. Daily transit slots have also been adjusted — nine at the Neopanamax locks, with Panamax slots stepping down as well.

The practical effects for containerised cargo are familiar from the last drought cycle:

• Draft limits cap how deep a ship can load. On some strings that means sailing below full capacity, which tightens space and firms rates.
• Slot limits mean auctions and priority. Booking certainty on Panama routings is worth more than it was six months ago.
• East Coast transits get less reliable, which pushes some cargo toward West Coast discharge plus rail — the routing our intermodal drayage and inland rail work exists to serve.

If your China–US East Coast planning still assumes a stable 28–35 day Panama transit, that number deserves a fresh look. Our China to USA lane page sets out the alternatives, and we go deeper on the timing question in how long shipping from China to the USA takes.

Where this leaves Eurasian overland

There is a third routing worth mentioning, because both of the above make it more interesting rather than less.

Rail and multimodal across Eurasia are not affected by either canal. China–Kazakhstan rail volumes grew through the first half of 2026, and container traffic on the Trans-Caspian Middle Corridor has continued to rise. For cargo moving between China, Central Asia and Europe, overland is not a fallback for when the sea lanes misbehave — it is a routing with its own economics, typically much faster than sea for the same corridor and far cheaper than air.

That is why we now run rail freight and multimodal as a service in its own right rather than a footnote to ocean freight.

Two honest caveats. The Middle Corridor remains the more constrained option, with finite ferry capacity across the Caspian and more handoffs than a single rail routing. And the corridor is markedly directional — the large majority of container traffic runs westbound, which means eastbound space and pricing behave differently from what a symmetrical model would predict.

What to actually do

• Ask which routing your booking takes. On Asia–Europe, “the usual transit time” is no longer a single number.
• Build a congestion buffer into European arrivals for the next couple of quarters, especially on time-sensitive retail cargo.
• Do not lock long-term rates on a single week’s spot signal. The direction of travel on rates is softer; the path there is bumpy.
• Re-check Panama-routed transits rather than reusing last year’s assumption, and price the West Coast plus rail alternative alongside.
• For China–Europe and China–Central Asia cargo, price rail against ocean properly. The gap is often smaller than people assume, and the transit difference is large.

If you want the realistic options for your specific corridor priced side by side rather than a single default, that is the conversation to have with us.