Thursday, November 12, 2026
The news that moves freight
Ocean Nov 12, 2026 · 8 min read

Panama Canal restores 50-foot draft and a 34th daily slot

Tracker Panama Canal: transits and water levels · 87 feet

A deeper Panama Canal for now, and a dry season that will test it

The Panama Canal is giving back some of the capacity it took away this summer. In an advisory to shipping dated 9 November, the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) raised the maximum draft at its Neopanamax locks to 50 feet (15.24 metres), with immediate effect. Daily reservation capacity rises from 33 to 34 slots. That is 24 slots at the older Panamax locks and 10 at the larger Neopanamax locks. The number of Panamax slots for “super” vessels, the biggest ships the old locks take, goes from 18 to 19. gCaptain reported the advisory on 11 November and said the ACP cited improving lake levels.

Two terms first. Draft is how deep a loaded ship sits below the waterline. The lower the canal’s draft limit, the less cargo a big ship can carry through. Reservation slots are the booked transits the canal sells each day. Ships without a booking can still turn up and wait, but they get no date.

Our view is simple. This is good news for the next seven weeks and a weak guide to the first quarter of 2027. The canal is using water from the rainy season while it has it. The dry season, roughly January to April, arrives during what may be the strongest El Niño on record. El Niño is a warming of the Pacific that is linked to drought in Panama. The ACP’s own actions suggest it is planning for tight capacity, and shippers should too.

How we got here

The canal was busy for most of fiscal 2026, which ended on 30 September. It handled 13,951 transits, up 4.1% on the year before. Cargo hit a record 521 million tons, beating the 2022 record of 518 million, according to The Maritime Executive. That works out to about 38 transits a day on average, by our arithmetic. For a period the canal raised daily transits from 36 to 41 to meet demand. Part of that demand came from ships avoiding Suez and the Red Sea, and later the war in the Persian Gulf.

Then the water outlook turned. In July the ACP said the chance of a severe El Niño had risen from 25% in April to 81%. Administrator Ricaurte Vásquez Morales warned that “capacity restrictions will likely be implemented, not only in terms of draft limitations.” The canal had gone nearly two years without draft restrictions, the ACP said. Then the Neopanamax draft was cut step by step: 49.5 feet, then 49, then 48.5, then 48 feet from early September. In August, gCaptain reported that rainfall across the watershed had fallen short even after the rainy season began. Neopanamax slots fell to nine a day from 3 September. Panamax slots went from 25 to 23 from 15 September.

A further cut to 47.5 feet was put off. On 28 September the ACP raised the draft back to 49 feet and restored the tenth Neopanamax slot from 15 October, for a total of 33. It cited “close to average precipitation in the watershed,” The Maritime Executive reported. Gatun Lake, the reservoir that fills the locks, was at about 84.7 feet then. By October it had reached 86.2 feet, above its five-year October average. This week’s step to 50 feet and 34 slots continues that recovery.

Why this is not the all-clear

Look at the forecast, not the lake. On 8 October the US Climate Prediction Center gave an 83% chance that this El Niño will reach a strength above every event in its records back to 1950. That is according to Watchers, which reported the centre’s outlook on 16 October. Its mid-October weekly reading in the key Pacific region was 2.4°C above normal. The centre said the event “remains in a strengthening phase,” Watchers reported. The next US seasonal outlook is due on 19 November.

The ACP is behaving as if it expects a hard dry season. In October it extended its Long-term Slot Allocation programme, or LoTSA, to the Panamax locks for the first time, as a pilot. LoTSA sells transit slots months in advance. The window is 3 January to 3 April 2027, which is the core of the dry season. The Neopanamax sealed-bid auction is on 17 November. The Panamax auction is on 24 November. There are 270 Neopanamax and 288 Panamax slots, 558 in all by our count, or about three a day at each set of locks. Food Business MEA reported the canal’s case for it plainly: “Securing slots before the dry season removes exposure to spot auction pricing.”

That pricing has been brutal this year. In April the ACP’s finance chief, Víctor Vial, said average auction prices rose from $135,000–$140,000 before the Middle East conflict to about $385,000 between March and April. The Maritime Executive reported that some daily auctions hit a record of over $5 million.

Even after this week’s increase, 34 booked slots is below the roughly 38 transits a day the canal averaged last year. The ACP still says a booking is the only way to guarantee a transit date, gCaptain reports. In its September advisory the ACP said ships without one “may therefore face indefinite delays.”

What happened last time

The last big squeeze is the obvious guide. During the 2023–24 drought, daily transit capacity fell to just 22 vessels at its worst point, gCaptain reports. That is 12 fewer than today’s 34 booked slots.

The canal has learned some things since then. It now cuts the draft in small steps, often half a foot at a time, and posts the dates weeks ahead. This year it postponed planned cuts more than once, then reversed them when rainfall improved. Advance slot sales now cover both sets of locks. All of that makes a repeat of the 22-a-day low less likely.

But the stakes are bigger too. The canal links about 180 trade routes and roughly 1,920 ports in 170 countries. It carries about $444 billion of trade a year, or around 3% of world seaborne trade, according to gCaptain. The Neopanamax locks carried just over 52% of tonnage last year (The Maritime Executive). They also bring in more than half of canal revenue (gCaptain). So a draft cut at those locks hits the biggest container ships and the biggest share of the business.

Costs are moving the same way. The ACP will also raise its per-net-ton fee from $1.00 to $1.75 per CP/SUAB ton, the canal’s measure of a ship’s capacity, while keeping the toll structure the same (Food Business MEA). That will come through in carrier pricing whatever the weather does.

Panama is also carrying extra load. Ships diverting away from Suez and the Red Sea, and then the war in the Persian Gulf, added to demand this year (The Maritime Executive). That is part of why auction prices went so high, even with full lakes.

What it means for forwarders and shippers

For cargo moving between now and the end of December, the deeper draft is a real gain. Asia–US East Coast and Gulf all-water services that use the Neopanamax locks can load deeper. That means fewer boxes left behind and fewer last-minute rollovers on heavy loads. The extra Panamax slot also helps bulk carriers, tankers and reefer ships. These are the ships most often stuck in the queue or paying auction premiums.

For January to April cargo, the picture is different. Here is what we would do.

Ask carriers now which Panama services hold LoTSA slots after the 17 and 24 November auctions. A service with booked dry-season transits is a safer bet than one relying on the spot auction.

Write draft risk into quotes. If the draft limit drops, carriers can cut how much they load or add surcharges at short notice. Agree now who pays.

Keep a West Coast option open. Routing via the US West Coast and inland rail is a hedge if Panama tightens. Price it before you need it, not after.

Watch the 19 November US climate update and the ACP’s advisories through December. The first draft cut announced for 2027 will lead to a scramble. Carriers that bought slots in advance will be fine. Those that didn’t will pay up or reroute.

Shippers on bulk and energy lanes face the same issue more sharply. Panamax vessels have little choice but the old locks. The ACP’s first-ever Panamax LoTSA pilot is a hint about where it expects queues.

Our call

We expect the ACP to announce a Neopanamax maximum draft below 50 feet by the end of February 2027. The reasons are the El Niño forecast, the dry season, and the canal’s own advance sale of dry-season slots. We also expect auction premiums for unbooked dry-season transits to rise well above this autumn’s levels as soon as that cut is announced. If El Niño fades faster than forecast and Gatun Lake holds above its five-year average into January, we would be wrong. That is the number to watch.

Sources

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