PORT HUB · CAPE TOWN
Cape Town’s 2024/25 cruise season was the longest and richest on record — 83 ship calls, 127,000 passengers, R1.99 billion in spend — and the 2025/26 season opened bigger still: 89 calls by 22 ships, with passenger growth projected at 23%.
The Cape Town Cruise Terminal sits in the V&A Waterfront — passengers disembark into South Africa’s most-visited destination, with Table Mountain as the backdrop and the Zeitz MOCAA next door. Forty-two of last season’s calls were long-haul world-cruise legs, the premium end of the market, and the season now stretches from October into June.
The season’s signature moment was Cunard’s Queen Anne maiden call on 10 April 2025 — a year after Queen Mary 2 and Queen Victoria docked together, a first in African history. Cruise tourism now supports roughly 1,200–2,000 direct jobs in the city, concentrated in retail, hotels and tour operations.
Cape Town is positioning as the Indian Ocean’s repositioning hub: the 2025/26 calendar is dominated by one-way voyages to Dubai, Doha, Singapore and Mauritius, with five roundtrips on top. The cruise lines’ logic is Cape Town’s hotel stock and airlift — the same assets that drove the airport record.
The commercial port behind the cruise business keeps its own ledger: container-terminal expansion is a named priority in the national transport budget, and the port’s cruise-and-cargo duality is exactly what makes the waterfront economics work. Watch the maiden-call count — eleven last season was the marketing number that matters.
The TIO read: Cape Town has solved the cruise equation — terminal inside the attraction, season stretching to ten months, world-cruise calls compounding. The next threshold is a true seasonal homeport; the airport’s new long-haul links are what will deliver it.
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