Port rankings are quoted constantly and used badly. The world's busiest port is not necessarily on your route, and several ports your cargo passes through do not appear in the top fifteen at all. The number that actually matters to a shipper is not throughput — it is whether a port is a gateway or a transshipment hub.
All figures are full-year 2025, taken from port authorities, operators or national statistics and checked on 16 August 2026. Lloyd's List has not yet published a 2026 edition of its port ranking, so there is no single authoritative 2025 table; rank order below is assembled from individual port figures and differs slightly from other compilations at ranks 9 to 15.
The top 15
| # | Port | Country | 2025 TEU | Type |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Shanghai | China | 55.06m | Gateway |
| 2 | Singapore | Singapore | 44.66m | Transshipment |
| 3 | Ningbo-Zhoushan | China | 43.87m | Gateway |
| 4 | Shenzhen | China | 35.41m | Gateway |
| 5 | Qingdao | China | 32.89m | Gateway |
| 6 | Guangzhou | China | 27.68m | Gateway |
| 7 | Busan | South Korea | 24.88m | Hybrid |
| 8 | Tianjin | China | ~24.03m | Gateway |
| 9 | Jebel Ali | UAE | ~15.55m | Hybrid |
| 10 | Port Klang | Malaysia | 15.14m | Hybrid |
| 11 | Rotterdam | Netherlands | 14.20m | Gateway |
| 12 | Tanjung Pelepas | Malaysia | 14.03m | Transshipment |
| 13 | Antwerp-Bruges | Belgium | 13.63m | Gateway |
| 14 | Hong Kong | Hong Kong SAR | 12.91m | Transshipment-heavy |
| 15 | Xiamen | China | 12.51m | Gateway |
Two figures carry more uncertainty than the rest. Tianjin is contested — a widely repeated 20.81m almost certainly refers to the listed subsidiary rather than the port, since it is arithmetically inconsistent with the confirmed 2024 base of 23.28m. And DP World does not publish a separate Jebel Ali line, so that figure comes from analyst coverage.
Gateway or hub: the distinction that matters
A gateway port serves cargo that starts or ends its journey there. A transshipment hub exists to move boxes between vessels — cargo arrives and leaves by sea, never entering the local economy. The convention is that above roughly 75% transshipment a port is a pure hub, and below 25% it is incidental.
Where ports publish the split, it is revealing:
- Shanghai — 14.4% transshipment. The world's busiest port is overwhelmingly a gateway. Its scale is Chinese manufacturing, not connectivity.
- Singapore — around 85%. The second-busiest port in the world is mostly boxes changing ship.
- Tanjung Pelepas — around 90%. Almost purely a hub.
- Busan — 57%. A genuine hybrid, and the world's second transshipment port.
- Port Klang — 55.5%. Also hybrid.
The hubs that are not in the top 15 but are on your route
This is the practical point. Your cargo may transship at ports far down the list — or absent from it:
- Tanger Med, Morocco — 11.11m TEU in 2025, up 8.4%. A near-pure hub and a major Europe-Africa-Americas pivot.
- Colombo, Sri Lanka — 8.29m TEU, up 6.4%. The Indian subcontinent's transshipment centre.
- Salalah, Oman — roughly 4.3m TEU and growing sharply, partly because the Gemini network made it a core hub (see carrier alliances in 2026).
Every transshipment adds a lift, a wait for the connecting vessel, and a point where cargo can be rolled. A direct call at a smaller port frequently beats a routing through a larger one.
Europe and North America
Europe's largest in 2025: Rotterdam 14.20m, Antwerp-Bruges 13.63m, Hamburg 8.3m, Valencia 5.66m, Bremen/Bremerhaven 4.9m. Note that several of these are combined multi-port authorities rather than single terminals.
North America's largest: Los Angeles 10.24m, Long Beach 9.88m (its best year in 115 years), New York/New Jersey 8.90m. Worth stating plainly: no North American port ranks in the global top 15 — Los Angeles would sit around 18th or 19th.
What moved in 2025
- Global throughput passed 1 billion TEU for the first time, growing around 5%.
- Tanjung Pelepas jumped from 16th to 12th, up nearly 14% — the biggest mover in the top 20, and evidence of how quickly hub volumes shift when carriers redesign networks.
- Hong Kong fell 5.7% and its own maritime body expects further decline.
- Ningbo-Zhoushan closed to within about 0.8m TEU of Singapore for second place.
Congestion, with a caveat
Northern European ports have had a difficult 2026, with congestion reported to persist into at least August and barge delays at Rotterdam and Antwerp attributed to congestion rather than water levels. Specific waiting-time figures circulating online are mostly from low-quality aggregators, so we are not repeating them — ask your forwarder for current berth waiting times on your actual service instead.
How to use this
- Ask whether your routing is direct or transships, and where. This affects transit reliability more than the port's size.
- Do not equate big with good. A large gateway can be congested; a mid-sized port with a direct call can be faster.
- Check the alliance behind the service — network design determines which hubs you touch.
- Budget free time at the destination port specifically. Demurrage terms vary by port — estimate exposure.
- Add buffer for transshipment legs when planning, and see transit times by route.
Find forwarders where your cargo actually originates — browse the directory by country — or post a request and compare the routings offered.
