The Port of San Diego opens its 2026-2027 cruise season on September 14 with 183 scheduled ship calls, a 68 percent jump over last season and roughly 700,000 passengers moving through two downtown terminals between now and late spring. The Port is calling it the biggest season in 15 years. Royal Caribbean drives much of it, basing a ship in San Diego for the first time in its history, and Disney has signed on through 2031.
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A ship call and a cruise you can board are two different things, and the headline number counts both. Here is how the 183 breaks down, because it changes how much of this season is available to you.
- A homeported ship starts and ends its voyage at this pier - four lines base ships here this season, which is what lets a Southern California cruiser drive down, park, and walk aboard without booking a flight.
- A port call is a ship stopping on its way somewhere else - those passengers boarded in Los Angeles, Vancouver or Fort Lauderdale and get one day ashore here. The Port counts their visit in the 183 exactly the same as a departure.
- The 68 percent works out to about 109 calls last season - the Port publishes the percentage and leaves the prior-year count out, so that figure is arithmetic rather than a published number. Know what the comparison rests on before you quote the jump.
- You do not pick your terminal, and it does not matter - the B Street Cruise Terminal and Broadway Pier sit a few minutes apart on the same stretch of downtown waterfront, so your hotel and airport logistics are identical whichever berth the line draws.
- Overlapping weeks are easier to compare with help - Heather Hills at Flow Voyages tracks West Coast deployments for a living and can tell you which of the competing Mexico itineraries suits how you travel. She can help you book a cruise out of San Diego or anywhere else on the coast.
I lived in San Diego for close to a decade, walking distance from the cruise terminals, through the worst of this. Ships left and did not come back, the recovery crawled, and then COVID shut the whole thing down a second time. So a season this size reads differently to me than it does as a press release statistic.
The record year was 2008: 252 ship calls and more than 800,000 passengers. Then the recession hit, media coverage of Mexican cartel violence scared off the Mexican Riviera and Baja Cruise market, and the cruise traffic that remained, moved north to Long Beach and Los Angeles. Port calls in San Diego fell to roughly 200 in 2009-2010 and the erosion continued.
By 2012-2013 San Diego was down to 79.
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The climb back has been uneven. The 2022-2023 season hit 140 calls and about 460,000 passengers, the strongest showing since 2009-2010, and then the count slipped again before this season's jump - something that I hope will continue to increase over the next several years despite headwinds including increased fuel prices immigration issues related to policies executed by the current administration, and the continueing specter or cartel-related violence in Mexico.
Ultimately, the industry overall continues to thrive but this corner of the market has some fundimental issues that remain challenges such as lack-luster port facilities in Ensenada (something Carnival is working hard to fix) and my personal dream of there somehow being a beach-club / private port type stop somewhere between Ensenada and Cabo San Lucas that would allow for a similar experience to what folks love about places like Half Moon Cay and Royal Caribbean's "Perfect Day" developments.
From a port impact though, while there are fewer calls - at 183 visits projected this season, San Diego is running about 73% of the 2008 peak but is much closer to the 2008 peak in passenger volume (88%), because each ship now averages about 3,800 people against roughly 3,200 in 2008. Cruise ships continue to get bigger over the past 15 years , so while San Diego handles 69 fewer ship visits, the tour companies, restaurants, and other vendors will benefit from nearly as many total passengers.
Cruise Pick of the Month
Virgin Voyages Mexican Riviera, October 2027
Why we picked it: adults-only, with tips and most dining included.
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New This Year: Royal Caribbean Has Never Based a Ship Here Before
Serenade of the Seas starts sailing from San Diego on October 2, 2026, opening with a 2-night run to Ensenada. Royal Caribbean has called at this port for years without ever homeporting a ship here, which makes this the headline in the Port's announcement.
The winter program runs 3, 4, and 7-night itineraries. The short ones work Catalina Island and Ensenada, the pairing that shows up on nearly every California-based short cruise because of the Passenger Vessel Services Act. Four 7-night departures across the fall and winter run to Cabo San Lucas, Mazatlan and La Paz, two of them over the December holidays.
La Paz is new to Royal Caribbean's San Diego lineup, and it carries a logistics caveat. The port opens the Sea of Cortez, where the whale shark aggregation gathers through the winter. But ships tie up at Pichilingue, about 20 kilometers and a 30-minute drive from town, and the whale shark boats leave from the La Paz marina under a permit system with wristbands, GPS tracking and on-water rangers capping how many operators run at once. Book that one ahead; you cannot walk off and find a boat.
Two Disney Ships in the Fall, One All Winter
Disney Wonder has homeported in San Diego for years and carries the season: October 2026 through April 2027 on 4- and 5-night Baja itineraries plus 7-night Mexican Riviera sailings hitting Catalina, Cabo San Lucas, Ensenada and Puerto Vallarta. Disney Magic joins it for the fall only, running short itineraries including a 6-night Halloween on the High Seas cruise on October 24, then leaving in late November on a 14-night Panama Canal repositioning to Galveston.
The durable news is the contract. The Port and Disney Cruise Line extended their homeport agreement through at least 2031 and roughly doubled the annual sailings between the two ships. A port that spent a decade watching lines pull out now has five years of Disney deployment on paper.
Heather and I sailed Wonder out of San Diego on a Very Merrytime holiday cruise a few years back, as a couple in our 40s on a ship built for families, and had a great time doing it. My first reaction to the fish extender tradition was to wonder why anyone would need to extend a fish.
Holland America Line Continues To Be A Long-Term Partner: Eight Baja Cruise Itineraries Sailing From San Diego
Holland America returned to San Diego in 2021 following the pandemic restart and hasn't wavered since. This season, Koningsdam and Zaandam are running 16 departures across eight itineraries from 7 to 12 days. Some sail roundtrip from San Diego and there are also repositioning cruises between San Diego and Vancouver and Seattle, which is useful if you want the Pacific Coastal run in one direction without paying for the return.
The itinerary I would look at first is the 7-day Baja Peninsula: Pichilingue for La Paz, Loreto, and Cabo San Lucas. Loreto, Mexico is a tender port with a 1697 mission church that started the chain, eventually reaching San Diego and San Francisco, and it sees a fraction of the traffic Cabo does. There are 10- and 11-day versions adding Sea of Cortez time and Manzanillo, and a 12-day that includes scenic cruising in Bahia Magdalena.
Princess, Norwegian and the Rest of the Cruise Lines Filling Out The 2026-2027 San Diego Cruise Ship Calendar
Princess opens the season on September 14 with a visit from Ruby Princess. Princess based its West Coast ships in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Vancouver, so San Diego is a port of call in that program, including a 5-day West Coast Getaway from San Francisco over Thanksgiving.
Norwegian is in its second year of homeporting in San Diego, with Norwegian Star running weeklong Mexican Riviera voyages from December 19, 2026 through March 27, 2027. Virgin Voyages brings Brilliant Lady through as a port call, having picked Los Angeles for its West Coast base. MSC Cruises, Silversea and Viking fill in the rest, mostly on Panama Canal transits that use San Diego as a stop. The visits by these cruise lines to the port of San Diego support more than 2,000 jobs in San Diego County, so this isn't just my own personal love of seeing the ships pull into port - it's direct dollars in the pockets of my friends and fellow travel advisors as well!
San Diego Is America's Finest Cruise Port - Thousands of Hotel Rooms Walking Distance To The Port and The Lindberg Field Is Only 2.4 Miles From the Pier!
San Diego has two terminals on the downtown waterfront, a shore power connectionat B Street dating to 2010 as part of roughly $24.7 million invested across the Port's cruise and cargo terminals, an international airport 2.4 miles up Harbor Drive that puts you at the gangway about ten minutes after you clear baggage claim, Amtrak's Pacific Surfliner stopping at Santa Fe Depot a few blocks from the pier, and hundreds of hotel rooms you can walk from.
It has never been enough to win the deployments. San Pedro and Long Beach sit roughly two hours north, closer to the Los Angeles and Orange County population base and a far larger drive-up market, and that is a structural headwind no amount of terminal investment fixes. Carnival is the clearest example: this site covered Carnival Miracle opening the San Diego season in December 2019, and by 2021 Carnival had suspended its San Diego sailings and moved that ship to Long Beach, where it still sails.
As a port of call, though, San Diego wins outright. You walk off the ship into downtown instead of an industrial terminal with a shuttle queue, which is why I still call it America's Finest City and the finest cruise port in California!
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