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RESEARCH

Suez Canal Traffic 2026: Official Recovery Numbers Clash With Pre-Crisis Baseline Trackers

Supply Chain · 2026-07-28 14:09

Nearly two years after Houthi attacks triggered a mass diversion of container shipping around the Cape of Good Hope, sources disagree sharply on whether the Suez Canal is recovering. The Suez Canal Authority points to year-over-year gains in vessel transits, tonnage, and revenue through H1 of its 2025/26 fiscal year. But BIMCO, Xeneta, and Alphaliner-sourced trackers all measure against the pre-crisis 2023 baseline and find traffic still well below normal, depending on whether the metric is vessel count, tonnage, or container capacity. The disagreement isn't about direction -- it is about which baseline year defines recovery.

Findings

  • BIMCO reported Suez Canal transits were still 60% below the corresponding week in 2023 as of the first week of 2026, one hundred days after the last major Houthi attack, showing the Cape of Good Hope reroute persisting despite reduced attack frequency.
  • Xeneta capacity data shows monthly Asia-Europe container capacity routed through Suez fell from 4.1 million TEU in 2023 to just 292,000 TEU in 2025 -- a roughly 93% drop that outpaces every vessel-count-based recovery narrative.
  • The Suez Canal Authority own H1 FY2025/26 figures (1,315 vessel transits, 56 million net tons, $449 million revenue) show a 5.8% year-over-year increase in vessel count and 16% rise in tonnage -- but that comparison is against the already-depressed prior year, not the pre-crisis 2023 baseline independent trackers use.
  • Alphaliner-sourced data shows Suez container ship transits fell 16.7% year-over-year in January 2026 (150 vs. 179 in January 2025), the fifth consecutive month of year-over-year decline despite an October ceasefire announcement.

Delta Engine result

↔ Divergence Detected — Δ 0.2716 (threshold 0.05)

Evidence quality

avg 37 · min 25 · max 55 · spread 30