By Eric Huang    Photo：CANVA

If you have ever sat through an annual ocean freight contract negotiation, you already know that the hardest part is never the number printed on the rate sheet. The real difficulty lies in something far less tangible: deciding which version of the future you are actually betting on. That is precisely why, when we try to anticipate the direction of international shipping in 2026, the right question is not simply whether freight rates will fall. The more honest - and more uncomfortable - question is this: what kind of decision-making behavior is the market forcing upon us?

Looking back at 2025, many logistics professionals share a quiet sense of exhaustion. The Red Sea crisis, extended routings around the Cape of Good Hope, rhythm disruptions at European ports, repeated shifts in U.S. tariff policy, and the gradual rollout of carbon regulations - each of these factors alone would have been enough to reshape an annual plan. Instead, they arrived all at once. For many companies, simply “getting through the year without something going wrong” became an unrealistic expectation rather than a baseline assumption.

And yet, it is precisely against this backdrop that 2026 presents a paradoxical contrast. Structurally, it is shaping up to be a year of gradually loosening capacity and downward pressure on base freight rates. Psychologically and operationally, however, it remains filled with uncertainty. These two realities are not contradictory; they are simply difficult to hold in one’s mind at the same time. Many market participants are still adjusting to the idea that a softer rate environment does not automatically translate into an easier operating environment.

To understand this contradiction, we need to begin with a concept that is concrete in practice but often treated abstractly in discussion: transit time. At the height of the Red Sea crisis, a trade lane that typically took around thirty days from Asia to Northern Europe was stretched beyond forty days. On paper, vessels were still sailing and weekly services still existed. In operational reality, however, a significant portion of the route’s effective capacity had quietly disappeared.

One of our clients - a Taiwanese exporter of electronic components - experienced this firsthand in late 2024. Their monthly export volume remained steady at roughly 120 containers, and on paper, their carrier allocations had not been reduced. Yet rollovers became increasingly frequent. As transit times lengthened, carriers were forced to prioritize higher-yield contracts and strategic accounts. This is perhaps the clearest illustration of how time itself becomes capacity. No vessel had vanished from the fleet, but the efficiency required to complete a full-service loop had been severely eroded.

This is why, when signals began to emerge in the second half of 2025 suggesting that Red Sea risks might gradually ease, the market’s anxiety was not centered on security alone. A more unsettling question loomed beneath the surface: if ships really do come back, is the system ready for them? This is not a theoretical concern. Over the past year, several European ports adapted to more dispersed arrivals and slower, less synchronized calling patterns. A rapid, concentrated return to the Suez route could easily recreate a scenario in which nominal transit times are shortened while actual delivery reliability deteriorates. History offers a cautionary tale here. During the alliance restructuring of 2016, multiple European ports experienced temporary chaos as schedules were redrawn and vessel arrivals bunched unexpectedly.

This explains why, even in a weakening freight market, 2026 is still likely to produce frequent operational disruptions. For cargo owners, the implication is uncomfortably clear: lower freight rates do not automatically equate to lower supply-chain risk.

Zooming out further reveals another reality that has been steadily approaching the market: newbuild capacity. Over the past several years, buoyed by high freight rates and supportive capital markets, carriers placed massive orders for new vessels. These ships will not disappear simply because sentiment shifts. They will be delivered throughout 2025 and 2026, and once delivered, they must be deployed.

A logistics director at a major European retail group once summed this up in an internal presentation with a wry observation: “Ships are like rain. They don’t stop falling just because you’d rather stay dry.” When new tonnage enters the market without a corresponding surge in demand, pressure inevitably expresses itself through price competition. This is why many carriers continue to emphasize “market uncertainty” in public statements, while quietly showing far greater flexibility at the negotiating table with large-volume shippers.

Yet this pressure will not be felt evenly across the market. This is a crucial dividing line for 2026. Companies that can offer stable volumes, accept multi-route allocations, and preserve contractual flexibility will feel the shift in market power much more clearly. By contrast, those that chase the lowest spot rates without operational backup may find themselves paying a far higher price when conditions tighten unexpectedly.

We have already seen this dynamic at work in 2025. An exporter of furniture in Southeast Asia chose to rely almost entirely on the spot market early in the year and succeeded in driving down freight costs in the short term. However, when a brief congestion episode hit a major European port, the absence of any contractual protection delayed their pre-peak-season replenishment. Ultimately, they were forced to airfreight a portion of high-margin products to meet customer commitments - erasing the savings they had worked so hard to achieve. Stories like this are unlikely to become rarer in 2026; if anything, they will become more common.

Complicating matters further is the fact that “price” no longer refers solely to freight rates. As Europe’s carbon-related regulations continue to take effect, logistics costs are developing new layers. One Asian consumer goods company with a warehouse footprint in Germany received its first ETS-related surcharge invoice in 2025, and the internal reaction was telling. The finance team struggled to understand how the charge had been calculated. Freight rates had declined, yet the company’s total ocean shipping expenditure had not fallen as expected.

By 2026, this will no longer be an exception - it will be the norm.

As a result, companies are being forced to rethink what they are actually optimizing for. The objective is no longer the lowest possible rate, but predictable total cost. It is no longer the shortest transit time, but the most reliable distribution of delivery outcomes. This helps explain why some carriers and alliances are increasingly positioning schedule reliability and network stability as their core value propositions. In an environment of ample capacity, the ability to maintain rhythm amid disruption becomes a differentiator - and, potentially, a justification for premium pricing.

Whether that premium can be sustained in a truly loose market remains to be seen. When capacity is abundant and congestion subsides, cargo owners will inevitably ask a blunt question: “If everyone is on time, why should I pay more?” The answer to that question will define competitive dynamics in 2026.

Policy adds another layer of complexity. Trade policy uncertainty, particularly in the United States, continues to inject irregularity into demand patterns. Tariff ambiguity has repeatedly altered shipment timing, encouraging some companies to front-load exports while prompting others to pause entirely. One Taiwanese manufacturer of industrial machinery among our clients cycled through three dramatically different strategies in the space of six months: accelerating shipments, temporarily suspending exports, and then restarting production once again. From the shipping market’s perspective, demand did not disappear - it simply became fragmented and intermittent.

This kind of stop-start demand is especially dangerous because it is easily misread as a structural trend rather than a policy-driven distortion. In 2026, the most disciplined players will be those who learn to filter out this noise rather than react reflexively to every spike or dip.

Taking together, these forces make 2026 feel less like a single storyline and more like a novel told in chapters. Early in the year, the market will still be adjusting to route and schedule realignments. By midyear, excess capacity will increasingly translate into sharper price competition. Toward the end of the year, compliance costs and cost transparency will move to the center of negotiations.

For cargo owners, the decisive factor in 2026 will not be who secures the lowest freight rate, but who manages to strike the right balance between cost, stability, and flexibility. For freight forwarders, the challenge is even more severe. They must absorb downward pricing pressure while continuing to shoulder operational risk on behalf of their customers.

Perhaps the most important reminder, however, is a human one. After years of sustained pressure, the industry is collectively yearning for simplicity. But 2026 will not reward overly simplified thinking. What brings genuine reassurance is not pretending that order has returned to the world but building decision-making rhythms that function even when disorder persists.

If one sentence were enough to summarize the outlook for international shipping in 2026, it would be this: on average, freight may become more affordable - but for those who are unprepared, every misjudgment will be more expensive than ever before.

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