Shipping Cannes significantly restricts docking of giant cruise ships
After Nice, Cannes is also significantly restricting the mooring of huge cruise ships in its waters. As the city council announced on Saturday, in future no two cruise ships will be allowed to anchor in its bay at the same time.
29.06.2025, 06:43
SDA
Large ships with more than 3,000 passengers will now only be allowed to dock once a day. The new upper limit for the total number of cruise ship passengers is 6,000 per day.
According to the city council, the decisions will reduce the number of arrivals of large ships off Cannes by almost 50 percent - initially to 34 next year and then 31 in 2027. For environmental reasons, only ships with a maximum of 1,300 passengers will be allowed to dock off Cannes around 2030.
The city on the French Côte d'Azur, which is famous for its annual international film festival, does not have a port large enough for the huge cruise ships. They therefore dock about 300 meters off the coast of Cannes and passengers are then taken ashore by ferry.
Nice with similar regulations
The cruise industry association Cruise Lines International Association (Clia) regretted the city council's decision. These are "unjustified restrictions on an industry that enables millions of people to discover the world and actively contribute to the vitality of port cities", the association explained.
Last year, there were still 175 cruise ship arrivals off Cannes with a total of around 460,000 passengers. An environmental charter has been in place for cruise ships there since 2019, and passengers are not allowed to take excursions to Cannes if they violate it.
In the neighboring city of Nice, Mayor Christian Estrosi signed a decree in January according to which ships with more than 900 passengers would no longer have been allowed to moor in the neighboring municipality of Villefranche-sur-Mer from July. However, this decision was withdrawn and instead the number of arrivals was limited to 65 per year. This means that several cruise ships are never allowed to moor at the same time, and an upper limit on the number of passengers is still being discussed. Meanwhile, only ships with fewer than 450 passengers are allowed to anchor in the port of Nice itself.
