The boxship newbuilding market is closing in on a 13m-TEU orderbook, with 1,592 vessels totalling 12.98m TEU on order as owners swing back towards “smaller” tonnage, according to Alphaliner.
The orderbook is now equal to 38.3% of the cellular fleet in service, underlining the scale of the contracting cycle even as the profile of vessels being ordered changes.
Jumbo container ship deals lifted the orderbook in 2024, when carriers were still chasing market share and economies of scale on mainline trades through large and ultra-large ships. But interest has shifted since 2025 towards mid-sized tonnage, with smaller ships taking a much bigger share of fresh orders.
Alphaliner said 2025 was a record year for contracting, with 737 containerships, or 5.05m TEU, ordered over the year. That expanded the global orderbook by almost one third.
The final two quarters of 2025 set all-time highs. Owners ordered 218 ships of 1.34m TEU in the third quarter and 265 ships of 1.57m TEU in the fourth.
The rally has continued into 2026. With a few days of the first half still remaining, owners have added 329 ships, or 1.89m TEU, to the orderbook. The first quarter alone set the highest first-quarter order count on record, beating the 177 units booked in the first quarter of 2021.
But the high number of ships has added less capacity in TEU terms, showing a clear shift in the type of vessels being ordered since the second half of last year. Since July 2025, 74% of orders have been for ships below 6,500 TEU. That compares with less than 30% in the corresponding period a year earlier, from the third quarter of 2024 to the second quarter of 2025.
The change follows a period in which carriers identified growing pressure in the smaller ship segment after the post-pandemic and early-2024 order waves had been concentrated mainly on larger vessels.
Alphaliner is a container shipping market intelligence service covering liner fleet, orderbook and capacity data.
