The Port of Melbourne moved a record 3.5 million TEU in 2025 — a second consecutive annual record — while Station Pier, a tram ride from Collins Street, expects around 120,000 cruise visitors in the 2026/27 season that starts this October.
Port of Melbourne is Australia's largest container and general cargo port, and 2025 set the tone: 3.5 million TEU for the year, beating the record it had set twelve months earlier, with December alone up 10.9% year on year at 314,000 TEU. The port sits at the head of Port Phillip Bay, fifteen minutes from the CBD, and moves roughly a third of the nation's container trade.
For travellers the port explains the city's bones: the riverfront warehouses of North Wharf — one of them now the 1 Hotel — are the old working waterfront, and Docklands' stadium-and-apartment grid is built on former port land.
Cruise ships berth at Station Pier in Port Melbourne, opened as Railway Pier in 1854 and heritage-listed; the Outer West berth takes ships up to 400 metres. The 2026/27 season opens 11 October 2026 with Crown Princess and runs to 20 May 2027 — around 120,000 visitors are scheduled, with overnight calls by Norwegian Spirit, Seven Seas Explorer and Europa 2 among the highlights.
Logistics are unusually easy: route 109 trams and a cruise-day shuttle link the pier to Collins Street in about fifteen minutes, myki cards are sold pierside, and each call is worth roughly A$1 million to the state economy. Victoria has been fighting Western Australia for calls — the 2025/26 season brought 128 total cruise visits — and the season now stretches across eight months.
Our read: as a cruise call, Melbourne is the best urban day in Australia — pier to laneway coffee in twenty minutes, no shuttle-bus purgatory. If you are choosing between a turnaround here and in Sydney, choose here for the city and Sydney for the sail-in. And watch the container record: it is why Melbourne's restaurant supply chain is the deepest in the country.
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