Top containership operators in 2026

Chart Toppers

Containership ownership is top heavy. The top ten container ship operators manage over 84% of the TEU (twenty-foot equivalent) capacity and operate 54.5% of the ships of the containership fleet (using numbers extrapolated from Alphaliner’s Top 100 list). You can view the charts in this month's AJOT Digital Edition on page 32. 

This is a staggering amount of TEU capacity jammed into a very short list at the top of the chart, which begs the question has the industry become too top heavy? Are the mega-carriers wielding too much power in their role as the primary conveyance of freight in the global supply chain?

Certainly, many international shippers think so. But it is a far from easy question to answer, even as the basic math paints a highly suggestive rejoinder.

Even among the top ten containership operators, there is a significant divide in size when it comes to TEU capacity with the top four containership operators compared to the rest of the top ten. In the top ten, Mediterranean Shipping Company, better known as MSC, is the world’s largest containership operator deploying 987 ships and over 7.2 million TEUs. Maersk is second at 732 ships with a capacity of over 4.6 million TEUs while the CMA CGM group checks in with a fleet of 723 ships at just under 4.3 million TEUs and in the fourth position is COSCO at 554 ships of nearly 3.6 million TEUs. They are the only container ship operators with over 500 ships and over 3 million TEUs. To show just how big the disparity is among the top ten alone, at the bottom of the ten, Zim Line’s capacity is just 700,000 TEUs — a large number but dwarfed by COSCO’s nearly 3.6 million TEUs in the number four slot.

And the steep fall off in TEU capacity really shows after Pacific International Lines (PIL), number twelve on the list, which operates 100 vessels of 443,154 TEUs. At number twenty-two Emirates Shipping Line with 24 vessels at 102,976 TEUs is the last containership operator with over 100,000 TEU capacity. And FESCO at number thirty-six with 51,831 TEU capacity is the last on the list with over 50,000 TEUs while Salam Pacific Indonesia Lines with 31,000 TEUs of capacity is the last of the over 30,000 TEU carriers.

The Power of Alliances

Many international shippers and regulators think that the mega carriers are wielding too much power. Certainly, the top ten containership operators wield a great deal of influence over the global movements of containerized freight as they are also the constituent members of the primary ocean carrier alliances: Gemini consisting of Maersk (2) and Hapag Lloyd — and soon Zim Lines (10) which is being acquired by Hapag Lloyd; The Premier Alliance, which includes ONE (Ocean Network Express) (6), Hyundai Merchant Marine (8) and Yang Ming Marine Transport (9); Ocean Alliance made up of CMA CGM (3), COSCO (4) and Evergreen Line (5); and MSC which is large enough to be its own alliance but has slot agreements with Zim which with the acquisition by Hapag Lloyd is likely to shift into Gemini in the future. However, MSC has acquired a 50% stake in Sinokor Merchant Marine (19) principally as a move to secure tanker tonnage. However, Sinokor does have a fleet of 69 boxships of over 125,000 TEUs, that operates largely as a feeder ship fleet.

It is worth noting that the carriers inside these alliances aren’t permitted to collaborate on freight rates but rather the alliances share slots on each other’s vessels as well as equipment swaps and other backroom supporting activities.

However, the biggest feature of the ocean carrier alliances is the coordination of vessel rotations. In the US there are few mega-ports such as the Port of New York/New Jersey and the San Pedro ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in which all three alliances call — especially for the first call inbound. Most US container ports are battling to secure an alliance call. From a port authority’s perspective, the loss of an alliance call means a great deal more than the loss of a single ocean carrier. It is a catastrophe, as the port’s shippers often have no choice but to re-route their freight through another gateway. Conversely, gaining an alliance call is often a great boost for a port. Among the smaller to mid-sized US ports an alliance call can be the difference between staying relevant to local shippers or slowly fading into oceanfront real estate.

Next Gen on the Way

Back in last November Alan Murphy, the founder and CEO of Singapore-based Sea-Intelligence, a container shipping analysis and data firm made an interesting observation that is still true today in 2026, “the order book... we have over two-thirds of the current order book of vessels more than 20,000 [TEUs]. So, we’ve got a lot of mega vessels coming on screen over the next three to four years. And that will shift that dynamic very heavily of the TEU fleet. The big vessels go East-West.” And what that means is “we have an awful lot of capacity coming on screen over the next few years. And that’s good news if you’re a shipper. Because everything else equals by the relationship of supply and demand. And we will have more supply coming on.”

A great deal of the ocean carrier orderbook is concentrated at the top — really the top four containership operators. MSC, Maersk, CMA CGM, and COSCO are the only containership operators with over a million TEUs in ship order. They are also the only carriers with over 100 ships on order. Evergreen, the number eight carrier with 908,528 TEUs (75 vessels) is close but it shows just how many TEUs are in such few hands and how likely it is to remain that way.

Another aspect of Murphy’s observation is that more ships should, but probably won’t, mean lower freight rates in the near future. The reason for this incongruency is the regular occurrence of disruptions — currently the US/Israel–Iran conflict has all but closed the Red Sea and the Strait of Hormuz to containership traffic. And without the availability of the Suez Canal route, containerships on the Far East to Europe have been rerouted around the Horn of Africa. When and how the Strait of Hormuz will again open is up in the air and even if it does, will it be secure enough for a return to regular containership traffic?

So, from a freight rate perspective the increase in bunker fuel costs (surcharges) and the increased distance and route complications to the rotations [blank sailings] adds up to more ships, more time and ultimately higher costs for the shipper. It has been said many times over the last decade, but disruptions are better for the containership operators’ bottom line. On the other hand, the shipper is just happy if they are simply able to pass through the added costs.

The Question of Consolidation

With the containership fleet already top-heavy is consolidation of carriers still in the cards? In 2026 we see the likely purchase of Zim by Hapag Lloyd and the Sinokor stake taken by MSC, with an asterisk that this was largely a move to build the tanker business. While it is difficult to see more consolidation with the top ten carriers, there is motivation for another round of mergers. The motivation is simple — the economy of scale. And while the alliances provide competitive leverage, ownership enables a pricing advantage that alliances do not have because of anti-trust regulations.

With Zim off the board with the sale to Hapag Lloyd, Yang Ming would look to be the only acquisition left in the current top ten but regional carriers like Wan Hai Lines at number eleven or Pacific International Lines (PIL) or even Regional Container Lines at 21 could be of interest under the right circumstances. The major barrier is that economy of scale works best when ships are of similar size and in most cases the carriers out of the top ten are running smaller vessels that wouldn’t match well with existing rotations.

But if any single observation has remained true over the last two decades of container ship operators, the big likely are getting bigger.