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Global schedule reliability fell by 6.1 percentage points in July to 56.4%, according to the latest analysis from Sea-Intelligence. This was the lowest level recorded in 2026 and the sharpest monthly decline since January 2021. Reliability was also 8.8 percentage points lower than in July 2025.

The average delay for vessels arriving behind schedule increased by 0.59 days to 6.06 days. This was the highest level since January 2024 and 1.34 days more than a year earlier.

Sea-Intelligence attributes the deterioration primarily to widespread congestion in Asia. All 14 of the region’s busiest container ports recorded a decline in on-time vessel arrivals during July.  With more than half of arriving vessels delayed at many of Asia’s principal ports, Sea-Intelligence expects the accumulated disruption to spread through global shipping networks. This could result in further delays on important export routes from Asia during the coming months.

The deterioration was visible across all leading container lines. None of the 13 largest carriers monitored by Sea-Intelligence improved its schedule reliability during July.

Maersk remained the best-performing carrier, with reliability of 73.7%, followed by Hapag-Lloyd at 69.3%. Maersk was the only major carrier to achieve reliability above 70%. Wan Hai recorded the lowest performance, at 29.8%, while MSC experienced the largest monthly decline, falling by 11.9 percentage points.