Vancouver moved roughly 1.4 million cruise passengers between February and October 2026, its busiest season on record and a 17 percent jump over 2025, according to the Vancouver Fraser Port Authority. Vessel traffic rose 19 percent, with 358 ships calling at the Canada Place Cruise Terminal.

For a single-terminal operation celebrating its 40th anniversary this year, that's not a gradual climb. It's a step change in throughput — and one the port says it absorbed without visible strain.

July and August alone pushed close to 575,000 passengers through the terminal. The season also set a record for the highest number of three- and five-ship days in the port's history, meaning peak-day berthing, coach transfers and customs staffing all ran at levels never tested before.

How did operations hold up under record volume?

Better than most terminals manage on a quiet Tuesday, apparently. The port authority reported that 87 percent of ships departed early or on time. Passenger journeys from terminal arrival to ship embarkation averaged 30 minutes.

Those are operational metrics, but they carry commercial weight. Turnaround speed and berth reliability are exactly what cruise lines weigh when allocating ships across Alaska-itinerary homeports (the ports where voyages begin and end). Vancouver competes with Seattle for that business, and a season of record volume with smooth operations is the strongest pitch a port can make.

The Norwegian Encore closed out the season on October 12, 2026, as Cruise Industry News reported.

What else marked the year?

A few milestones stand out:

• Nine ships completed maiden calls at Canada Place.
• The terminal processed its one millionth cruise passenger through U.S. Customs and Border Protection using facial biometrics — a throughput figure worth noting for any operator still queueing passengers at manual counters.
• The terminal marked 40 years of operations.

The biometrics milestone deserves a pause. One million passengers processed via facial matching at a single terminal is concrete evidence that document-free customs clearance has moved from pilot project to routine infrastructure. Terminals that haven't made that shift are now the outliers.

The port authority credited its partners by name: cruise line customers, local authorities, the tourism industry, destination management companies (the local firms that package ground services for arriving passengers), and the terminal operator team including SSA Marine. That roster is a reminder of how many revenue hands touch a single turnaround.

What's next?

The port isn't resting on the record. Planning for 2027 is underway, with a preliminary schedule already published: 383 calls expected between March and November, subject to change.

If those calls hold, Vancouver would grow vessel traffic by another 25 calls, roughly 7 percent, on top of this year's 19 percent surge. The port authority said the season is shaping up to be "another exciting and busy season for cruise in Vancouver."

Exciting is their word. Sustained double-digit growth two years running is ours — and it's the kind of number that should worry competing homeports and please every shore-excursion seller, transfer operator and hotel within coach range of Canada Place.