Almost every restriction on where a cruise ship may go was made after 2020, and most published summaries of them are wrong in the same few ways. Venice's ban is not a tonnage limit but four alternative triggers, one of which is a height. Barcelona is closing terminals, not capping calls. Norway's zero-emission requirement does not reach large cruise ships until 2032. Dubrovnik, routinely listed alongside the others, has no binding cap at all — only recommendations traceable to a study of 2007. And the clearest warning comes from Nice, where a mayoral order limiting cruise calls was suspended by the administrative court four days after it was signed.
Venice: four triggers, not one
A decree-law of 20 July 2021 bars ships from the Bacino di San Marco, the Canale di San Marco and the Canale della Giudecca with effect from 1 August 2021. The threshold is usually reported as a tonnage limit. It is not. A ship is barred if it has any one of four characteristics — gross tonnage over 25,000, hull length at the waterline over 180 m, air draught over 35 m, or manoeuvring fuel with a sulphur content of 0.1 per cent or more.
Two things follow that are routinely got wrong. The 35 m figure is a limit on height, not on depth, and sail-motor hybrids are excluded from it. And there is no limit on draught below the waterline at all.
Where ships go instead is still a matter of temporary arrangements. The port authority lists moorings at Porto Marghera on the Liguria and Lombardia docks, dual use of the Fusina ro-ro terminal, an additional Monday mooring at the Marghera TIV terminal, Marittima and San Basilio in Venice itself, Chioggia tested for smaller ships, and the first temporary moorings in the North Canal. A permanent replacement is being built there: a preliminary purchase agreement for the site was signed in July 2024, the first stage — two berths for ships up to 300 m, on more than ten hectares — is intended for the 2027 season, and the terminal is expected to be fully operational in 2028.
Barcelona: fewer terminals, not fewer ships
An agreement signed on 17 July 2025 between the city council and the port reduces the number of cruise terminals from seven to five. It contains no cap on the number of calls and no cap on passengers, which is close to the opposite of how it is usually described. Passenger numbers at Barcelona are still rising.
The timetable runs: closure of the Barcelona South wharf terminal and demolition of the present Terminal C by the end of 2026; construction of a new public terminal and the opening of Terminal G in 2027; the new Terminal C operational, and work on the Terminals A and B area, in 2028; the Montjuïc coastal corridor in 2029; full compliance by 2030. The new public terminal is sized for a maximum of 7,000 passengers at any one time. All cruise activity had already moved to the Adossat dock by October 2023.
The Greek islands: a passenger cap and a seasonal levy
Santorini has the most precisely drawn cap of any Mediterranean port. A decision of the municipal port fund of Thira, dated 19 September 2024, sets a maximum of 8,000 cruise passengers on the island on the same day for both the 2025 and 2026 seasons, allocated by a weighted slot system whose criteria include the number of a company's calls, the duration of the stay, calls made in the low season, cancellations and the time of submission. The low season is defined as 1 January to 30 April and 1 October to 31 December. Note what is limited and what is not: the cap is on passengers, not ships.
Greece also charges a statutory levy on every passenger disembarking at a Greek port, under a law of 2024, and its structure is the part worth knowing. The rate is highest from 1 June to 30 September, a little over half that in October and from April to May, and lowest from 1 November to 31 March — and at Mykonos and Santorini it is four times the rate charged at every other Greek port, in each of the three seasons. The levy falls on the disembarking passenger and is not subject to value added tax.
Palma
Mallorca works by memorandum rather than by regulation. An agreement of May 2022 between the Balearic government and the cruise trade association, running to 2026, permits no more than three cruise ships a day at Palma, of which only one may carry more than 5,000 passengers; a one-year exception allowed four ships on up to eighteen days in 2022. A new five-year agreement reported in March 2026 — between the regional government, the city council, twenty cruise lines and the trade association — reduces the daily average from 8,500 to 7,500 for June to September, from 2027 to 2029, keeping 8,500 for the rest of the year. The figure was reported as berths, which in cruise usage ordinarily means passengers rather than quay space, and that reading should be treated as the likely rather than the confirmed one.
The port authority's own instrument, signed on 18 March 2025, is sometimes cited as a restriction and is not one: it assigns cruise ships priority berths at Palma but sets no daily maximum and no size limit.
Cannes, and the order at Nice that lasted four days
A municipal ordinance at Cannes, effective 1 January 2026, caps total disembarking passengers at 6,000 a day and bars ships carrying more than 1,000 passengers from docking in the harbour, requiring them to anchor offshore and tender passengers in.
Thirty kilometres along the same coast is the clearest illustration available of why the difference between an announcement and an instrument in force matters. On 9 July 2025 the mayor of Nice issued an order banning calls by ships carrying more than 450 passengers at Nice, and capping ships of more than 2,500 passengers at Villefranche-sur-Mer at 65 a year and no more than one a day. On 13 July 2025 — four days later — the administrative court at Nice suspended the order on the application of the prefect, holding that the mayor had no competence to make it, since only the prefect may organise the entry, exit and movement of ships under his police powers over the water area. What rule now applies at Nice cannot be stated with confidence.
Amsterdam: a cap that is operating, and a decision that is not
Three separate things are usually run together here. The city council did vote, in 2023, in favour of limiting sea cruise calls at the city-centre terminal to 100 a year from 2026 — close to half the then-current total — and closing the Veemkade terminal entirely by 2035. The cap is real and operating: the port states that it implemented the hundred-call limit on its own initiative.
But the removal of ocean cruise from Amsterdam is not decided. As of January 2026 the port reported that relocation to Coenhaven in 2035 had been found feasible in law, in planning and financially, that the serving executive board considers relocation undesirable, and that the final decision is left to the next board.
River cruise is a separate matter, with its own announced halving of calls and a target of reducing cruise ship moorings to 1,150 by 2028 from 2,300. Amsterdam also charges a day tourist tax, per person aged two and over, for each day or part of a day, with crew exempt. It applies to transit passengers and to ships mooring within the municipal boundaries, and to river cruise as well as sea cruise, and is collected by the port on the city's behalf.
Dubrovnik, which has no cap
Dubrovnik appears in nearly every list of capped ports and does not belong in one. The city's own action plan reproduces, as recommendations from a strategy of 2017, a maximum sustainable daily intake of 7,000 cruise visitors and 4,000 at one time — figures traceable to a study of 2007 — along with targets for spreading calls more evenly across the year and across the week. The plan states that the port authority and the city port must agree more even arrivals with the cruise companies, which is to say that the step has not been taken, and it acknowledges that the numerical caps alone may prove insufficient. The frequently quoted limit of two ships and 4,000 passengers a day corresponds to no published instrument.
Juneau, and two ballot measures that failed
Juneau is governed by a memorandum of agreement between the city and borough and the cruise lines, announced on 3 June 2024: 16,000 lower berths a day, and 12,000 on Saturdays, reviewed annually. It is an agreement rather than an ordinance, and it exists because the binding route failed twice. A proposal for ship-free Saturdays was defeated at the municipal election of October 2024, and a 2025 initiative to limit passenger numbers and shorten the season did not gather enough signatures to reach the ballot.
Bar Harbor: capped, and still in court
A daily cap of 1,000 cruise passengers coming ashore, passed by local referendum in 2022, took effect in 2025 and cut cruise traffic at the Maine port sharply. It is not settled law. The federal appeals court for the first circuit sided with the town in August 2025 but remanded the case to the district court, to decide whether a less restrictive approach should have been used.
Svalbard
Norwegian environmental regulations in force since 1 January 2025 make Svalbard the most tightly regulated cruising ground in Europe, and the restrictions fall on behaviour as much as on numbers. In the national parks, vessels calling at sea face a cap of 200 passengers. Tourist landings are permitted only at specific mapped sites, with limits on how many people may be ashore at once and a guide required — the Nordre Isfjorden and Sassen-Bünsow Land national parks, and areas already under traffic bans, stand outside that scheme.
Vessels must keep 300 m from polar bears, rising to 500 m from 1 March to 30 June, and 150 m from walrus haul-out sites, with a 5-knot limit within 300 m of them. From 1 April to 31 August the same 5-knot limit applies within 500 m of bird cliffs, and drones are banned within 500 m of them over the same period.
Norway's World Heritage fjords, and who the 2026 date actually catches
This is the restriction most often misreported, and the misreporting runs in the direction that matters. The maritime authority adopted zero-emission requirements for the World Heritage fjords in April 2025, with two dates: passenger ships of less than 10,000 gross tonnage from 1 January 2026, and passenger ships of 10,000 gross tonnage or more from 1 January 2032. A passenger ship means one carrying more than twelve passengers. Most cruise ships are well above 10,000 gross tonnage, so the 2026 date does not reach them.
Nor is zero-emission the only route. Biogas is permitted as an alternative, including after 2032, on conditions: it must be bunkered within the month before entering the fjords in a matching quantity, kept separate from fossil fuel, and not drawn from the gas grid under a mass-balance certificate, and it must achieve a greenhouse-gas reduction of between 50 and 65 per cent against a fossil reference, depending on when the production plant began operating. Shore power must be used where it is available and compatible. Smaller ships that operated in the fjords in 2024 may seek dispensation, for up to two years at a time and no later than 31 December 2029.
Emission control areas
Since 1 January 2020 the global limit on sulphur in ships' fuel oil has been 0.50 per cent by mass, down from 3.50 per cent. Inside an emission control area the limit is 0.10 per cent, and has been since 1 January 2015. Compliance may be by low-sulphur fuel, by gas or methanol, or by an approved equivalent such as an exhaust gas cleaning system.
The areas have spread quickly, and the practical consequence is simple: almost every sea a British cruise passenger is likely to sail in is now inside one, or shortly will be. The original sulphur areas were the Baltic Sea, the North Sea, the North American area and the United States Caribbean Sea area. The Mediterranean joined on 1 May 2025. Areas covering the Canadian Arctic and the Norwegian Sea came into force on 1 March 2026, the second of them extending the North Sea area across Norway's exclusive economic zone, fjords and coastal waters as far as the Russian border. And at the end of April 2026 a North-East Atlantic area was adopted, covering the territorial seas and exclusive economic zones of the United Kingdom, Ireland, Iceland, the Faroe Islands, Greenland, France, Spain and Portugal, with entry into force expected by 2027.
Shore power and the carbon price
Two European instruments decide when a ship at a berth must shut down its engines. Under the maritime fuel regulation, fully applicable since 1 January 2025 and covering ships above 5,000 gross tonnage calling at European ports whatever their flag, passenger and container ships at berth must use onshore power or an alternative zero-emission technology from 1 January 2030 in the ports covered by the infrastructure regulation, and from 1 January 2035 in all European Union ports that develop the capacity. Under the infrastructure regulation, qualifying ports on the trans-European network must be equipped by 31 December 2029 to supply shore-side electricity for at least 90 per cent of relevant annual calls, with the threshold for cruise ships set at more than 25 calls on a three-year average. Island and outermost-region ports not connected to a mainland grid are deferred.
Separately, maritime emissions entered the European emissions trading system on 1 January 2024, for ships above 5,000 gross tonnage carrying passengers or cargo commercially. The obligation was phased in at 40 per cent of 2024 emissions, 70 per cent of 2025 emissions and in full from 2026, with methane and nitrous oxide added to carbon dioxide from 2026. It covers all emissions on voyages within the Union and in Union ports, and half of emissions on voyages to or from a port outside it.
Dates to watch
Several of these arrangements expire or tighten within the next few years. The Mallorca memorandum runs to 2026, with the reduced summer average applying from 2027 to 2029. Santorini's cap was set for the 2025 and 2026 seasons and will need renewing. Barcelona's terminal closures fall in 2026, 2027 and 2028, and Venice's replacement terminal in 2027 and 2028. The North-East Atlantic emission control area is expected in force by 2027, bringing British and Irish waters inside the stricter sulphur limit. Norway's zero-emission requirement reaches large cruise ships on 1 January 2032. And two matters are genuinely open: the final decision on moving ocean cruise out of Amsterdam rests with an executive board not yet seated, and the position at Nice has been unsettled since the administrative court's suspension.
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