Since no offers were received by the deadline, the deadline has been postponed by one week.
This is the outcome of the 26 million euro tender for the rental of one or two cruise ships to host athletes and delegates for the 20th edition of the Mediterranean Games, scheduled for Taranto in the summer of 2026, a procedure managed by the public company Sport e Salute Spa, formerly Coni Servizi Spa, on behalf of the local organizing Committee.
The tender stipulates that a first ship, with a minimum of 3,000 lower beds, be made available from June 16 to September 5, 2026, while a second one, equipped with at least 2,200 lower beds, could be added from August 22 to September 3 if the Committee deems it necessary. For the first, the budget is 17 million euros, for the second 9 million, for a total amount as stated of 26 million, of which 11.96 million are not subject to reduction as they relate to labor costs.
The berths to be used are still to be defined, as the port will be in the peak of the cruise season. Regarding cold ironing – the tender requires a mandatory connection, even though the work to build the plant in Taranto is not finished (it should be completed by June 2026, given the funding with Pnrr funds) and even though the economic conditions for connection are not defined – among the clarifications it is instead specified that “during contract execution, alternative methods may be evaluated and possibly agreed upon with the Organizing Committee if they become necessary to ensure the regular execution of the service”.
In case of another unsuccessful tender procedure, opening private negotiations with individual operators is possible, while abandoning the ship solution appears difficult, since, according to local press reports, the International Committee of the games would have emphasized the need to gather all athletes, delegates, and participants in a single place following the logic of an Olympic village, a structure impossible to build from scratch due to time and cost constraints.
