Cruise ships are coming back to Philly in 2026. Port officials hope for ‘year-round’ business.

The Port of Philadelphia is getting back in the cruise business.

Starting in April 2026, Norwegian Cruise Line will stop by Philadelphia’s Delaware River port to pick up passengers for voyages to Bermuda, officials said Wednesday.

The cruise line will offer trips of up to nine days to Bermuda aboard the Norwegian Jewel, which can accommodate about 2,400 people. In the fall, itineraries will include Canada and New England.

Officials with the Philadelphia Regional Port Authority — a state agency known as PhilaPort that owns terminals and other port infrastructure — say the cruise business will be a boon to the regional economy.

“We’re hoping this is just a launching point for cruises to leave Philadelphia year-round,” Sean Mahoney, PhilaPort’s director of marketing, said in an interview. The port authority has been in talks with Norwegian Cruise Line for about two years, he said, adding that the company “was bullish on the Philadelphia market and the potential of the cruising public here.”

Bookings are already available. The price for a seven-day trip to Bermuda started at $1,197 per person as of Wednesday afternoon.

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PhilaPort officials said they anticipate that “if growth continues” in its cruise operations by 2028, this industry could create and support more than 2,000 direct and indirect jobs, as well as more than $40 million in annual tax revenue to the city and state. Philadelphia last welcomed a cruise ship around 2010, Mahoney said, but he expects this new service to pay bigger dividends.

Delaware River ports are a hub of international commerce, generating an estimated $49 billion in economic activity in 2021, according to the most recent analysis performed for the Maritime Exchange for the Delaware River and Bay.

“This means tourism travel to our city, jobs for our workers at PhilaPort, and simply put, broader economic opportunity for Philadelphia,” Mayor Cherelle L. Parker said in a statement.

Gov. Josh Shapiro said the development would help support Philadelphia’s tourism industry just as the city prepares to celebrate the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.

Over the next 18 months, port authority officials plan to invest the capital needed to develop Philadelphia’s Southport Marine Terminal Complex, which will service the cruise ships, according to Mahoney. He said PhilaPort would pay for the improvements out of its operating budget, which is funded by rents from tenants. The upgrades will likely cost several million dollars, he said, though an engineering firm still needs to complete an assessment.

“We need to upgrade the pier structure to be able to handle luggage, to screen luggage,” he said. “We want to make sure passengers can get on and off the ship in inclement weather,” as well as provide for sufficient parking.

Mahoney added, “We have the money. We have the budget to do it.”

The Delaware River waterfront property south of the Walt Whitman Bridge was once part of the Navy Yard. Another parcel of the Southport property is dedicated to an auto center, where hundreds of thousands of Hyundais and Kias shipped annually from South Korea are processed before they reach showrooms.

Public officials have spent years trying to decide how to best use the Southport property.

A 2015 report by the City Controller’s Office found that Southport’s economic impact would be strongest — as measured by jobs and tax revenue — if the property was developed into a modern container terminal.

PhilaPort and state officials ultimately decided to modernize the Packer Avenue Marine Terminal instead.

Norwegian Cruise Line is a subsidiary of Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings Ltd., a global company that has a combined fleet of 32 ships that visit 700 destinations across the world. NCL said the new service “will provide residents in the U.S. Mid-Atlantic region more access to cruising.”