San Diego Opens Biggest Cruise Season in 15 Years
Disney’s port agreement runs through at least 2031 and is expected to roughly double departures from San Diego, carrying more than one million passengers.
San Diego opened its 2026-27 cruise season Monday with 183 scheduled ship calls and more than 700,000 passengers projected through May. About 80% of the calls are homeport operations, with new Royal Caribbean service and a second Disney Cruise Line ship contributing to the expansion.
The call count is 68% above last season’s 109 and follows 75 calls in 2024-25. The projected passenger increase from roughly 389,000 last season is the port’s largest in 16 years. “It’s our biggest cruise season in 15 years,” said Renee Rose, maritime commercial manager for the Port of San Diego.
Homeport business leads the schedule
Rose said passengers on homeport calls often add hotel stays before or after their cruises and spend money at restaurants, shops and attractions. The remaining calls bring transit passengers ashore for the day.
“Those home ports tend to have more of an impact,” Rose said.
Royal Caribbean plans 47 calls carrying an estimated 177,660 passengers during the season. The line had previously called at San Diego only occasionally, and its scheduled volume surpasses longtime port customer Holland America Line.
Disney is deploying two ships to San Diego for the first time, including Disney Magic. The cruise line’s agreement with the port runs through at least 2031 and is expected to approximately double Disney’s departures from the city, carrying more than 1 million passengers over the term. It is the port’s first minimum annual guarantee from a cruise line in more than 20 years.
The season also includes Princess Cruises, Norwegian Cruise Line in its second year of homeporting, MSC Cruises, Virgin Voyages, Silversea Cruises and Viking. The port revised its passenger forecast from an earlier estimate of as many as 780,000 after adopting more conservative budgeting assumptions.
San Diego ranks as California’s third-busiest cruise port behind Long Beach and Los Angeles and is the closest West Coast cruise port to Mexico. Cruise activity supports more than 2,000 jobs across local tourism and maritime businesses.
Calls accelerate through the fall
Ruby Princess opened the season with a Monday call lasting from 8 a.m. until about 9 p.m. By October, at least one cruise ship is scheduled to visit San Diego nearly every day.
“It picks up as the traditional travel season, the summer season, winds down,” San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria said. He said the fall-to-spring schedule supports hotels, restaurants and attractions outside the city’s summer travel period.
The season’s final departure is scheduled for May 24. Passenger volume will remain below San Diego’s late-2000s peak, when annual cruise traffic approached 1 million.
Princess plans 17 San Diego visits in 2027-28, up from six this season. Most of those additional visits will be transit calls on cruises originating elsewhere.
