Asian port congestion caused a sharp deterioration in global container shipping schedule reliability in July 2026, with congestion across the region’s largest ports disrupting vessel arrivals and increasing delays.
Global schedule reliability fell to 56.4% in July, down 6.1 percentage points from June. According to Sea-Intelligence, this was the steepest month-on-month decline recorded since January 2021. At the same time, the average delay for vessels arriving late increased by 0.59 days to 6.06 days.
The latest Sunday Spotlight commentary from Sea-Intelligence highlights widespread deterioration across Asia, with all 14 of the region’s busiest ports recording weaker on-time vessel performance during the month.
Among the largest declines, Yantian saw schedule reliability fall by 23.5 percentage points to 48.3%, while Hong Kong dropped 20.4 points to 51.6%. Reliability at Ningbo declined by 20.1 points to 34.6%.
The most severe situation was recorded in Shanghai, where schedule reliability fell 19.2 percentage points, leaving only 21.0% of container vessels arriving on time in July. Sea-Intelligence notes that, excluding the exceptional disruption seen during the pandemic period, Shanghai has not recorded such a low level of schedule reliability during its 14 years of data.
Other major hubs were also operating at relatively low levels. Singapore recorded reliability of 43.2%, while Port Klang stood at 33.3% and Busan at 40.9%.
With more than half of incoming vessels delayed across many of Asia’s largest ports, Sea-Intelligence expects the resulting backlog to move through the wider container shipping network and potentially generate further delays across important head-haul trade lanes in the coming months.
Source: Sea-Intelligence Sunday Spotlight. Read the original commentary on the Sea-Intelligence website. Original Sea-Intelligence article
