• As a leader in sea logistics, Kuehne+Nagel closely tracks and collects data on vessel movements, including actual arrivals and delays.

• A summary of this analysis, based on neutral data, is published monthly in our Schedule Reliability Report, available on Sea News.

Executive Summary

Global on-time performance fell to 56.6% in June, down 3.7 percentage points month-on-month and 2.3 percentage points below June 2025, marking the first significant month-on-month decline of 2026 following three months of improving reliability.

Average arrival delays increased, with LATE vessels recording an average delay of 3.8 days, and the average delay across ALL vessel arrivals rose to 1.7 days.

Trade reliability weakened across most major trade lanes, with the largest declines concentrated on Asia-linked services, while Mediterranean/Black Sea and South America-related corridors outperformed the broader market.

Featured Trade: Asia ↔ North Europe
On-time performance on the Asia ↔ North Europe trade declined to 52.9% in June, interrupting a three-month period of improving reliability.

The deterioration was driven primarily by the North Europe → Asia leg, where on-time performance fell 16.6 percentage points, compared with a 4.7 percentage-point decline on the Asia → North Europe leg.

Operational challenges across several North European gateway ports likely contributed to the weaker June performance. Despite the setback, overall trade reliability remained above 2024 levels.

Global On-Time Performance

Global on-time performance decreased to 56.6% in June, a 3.7 percentage-point decline from the previous month.

Following strong performance earlier in the year, June's result was 2.3 percentage points below June 2025.

The decline represents the first significant month-on-month decrease of 2026, following three consecutive months of improving schedule reliability.

Arrival delays also increased in June. Vessels arriving LATE recorded an average delay of 3.8 days, while the average delay across ALL vessel arrivals rose to 1.7 days.

The increase in delays was consistent with the decline in on-time performance observed during the month.

Reliability per Trade Lane

Trade reliability weakened across most major trade lanes in June, with the largest declines recorded on the Asia ↔ South America West Coast, Asia ↔ North Europe and North America West Coast ↔ North Europe corridors.

Mediterranean/Black Sea trade lanes were among the strongest performers in June, recording several month-on-month increases, led by the South America East Coast and North America East Coast corridors.

North Europe ↔ South America West Coast (85.7%) remained the most reliable trade lane in June, ahead of Mediterranean/Black Sea ↔ South America West Coast (83.5%).

Reliability on Asia ↔ North Europe

On-time performance on the Asia ↔ North Europe trade improved steadily from February to May, rising from 39.1% to 64.5%. June interrupted this positive trend, with reliability declining by 11.6 percentage points to 52.9%.

Although performance declined in June, it remained 4.1 percentage points above June 2025 and 11.0 percentage points above June 2024, indicating stronger reliability than in recent years.

The decline occurred against a backdrop of operational challenges across key North European gateway ports, including disruption in Hamburg, elevated congestion levels and wider network pressures across North Europe.

Headhaul

Reliability on the Asia → North Europe leg declined to 55.8% in June, down 4.7 percentage points from May. Nevertheless, reliability remained 9.0 percentage points above June 2024, although it fell 2.6 percentage points below June 2025.

Arrival delays also increased during the month. LATE vessels recorded an average delay of 3.5 days, up from 3.4 days in May, while the average delay across ALL vessels increased from 1.3 to 1.6 days.

While June interrupted the improving trend observed between February and May, the deterioration was less pronounced than on the North Europe → Asia leg, indicating that the overall trade decline was driven primarily by weaker backhaul performance.

Backhaul

On-time performance on the North Europe → Asia leg fell sharply to 50.7% in June, a 16.6 percentage-point decline compared with May. This represents the largest month-on-month deterioration across the two trade directions and was the primary contributor to the decline in overall trade reliability.

Although a significant drop, June performance was 10.8 percentage points above June 2024 but 9.1 percentage points below June 2025.

Average delays across ALL vessels increased from 1.2 to 1.7 days, while LATE vessel delays fell from 3.5 to 3.3 days, indicating a high proportion of vessels arriving late, rather than an increase in delay days.

Methodology 

Calculating the on-time performance

To calculate the on-time performance of a service,Kuehne+Nagel uses vessel schedules from carrier(s) offering that service. Onlycarrier schedules that match our quality criteria are used for the schedulereliability calculation.

As carriers update schedules constantly, they become moreaccurate the closer vessels get to a destination port. For this reason, we haveimplemented a "schedule freeze period" of 14 days prior to actualvessel arrival. In other words, we benchmark the actual arrival with whatcarriers last announced 14 days earlier. To identify the actual time ofarrival, Kuehne+Nagel consumes AIS (Automatic Identification System) vesseldata. All vessels which arrive within a +/- 24-hour window at the port ofdestination compared to the last announced arrival are considered to be ontime. Port call omissions and blank sailings announced after the 14-day freezeare excluded from the calculation.

Assigning carrier services to multiple trade lanes

Many services operate on various trade lanes (e.g. a carrierservice between Asia and North Europe also calls ports in the Middle East andor the Mediterranean), and therefore carrier services may be listed in multipletrade lanes.

Definition of trade lanes

There is no common standard for the definition of tradelanes. This means, depending on the source, you will find different trade lanesas well as different regions, countries and ports assigned to a trade lane.Kuehne+Nagel has defined its own way of mapping and has assigned ports to thesetrade lanes accordingly. On-time performances of vessels are captured in ourreports on defined main trades, meaning trades moving large container volumeson vessels. Therefore, niche trades and services within one trade, called"Intra Trade" services (e.g. Intra-Asia, Intra-Europe), are currentlyout of scope.

A PDF version of this report can be found here.