Last updated: August 18, 2026. This guide is reviewed and revised monthly as carriers announce new rates — see the changelog at the end for what’s changed.
If you’re quoting Asia–US East Coast or Gulf freight right now, you’ve probably already felt it: a rate sheet that was accurate three weeks ago is wrong today. Since July 2026, five major ocean carriers have introduced or raised Panama Canal-related surcharges, and the Panama Canal Authority (ACP) has cut the maximum authorized draft twice in six weeks.
This guide exists so you don’t have to chase six separate carrier bulletins to quote a single booking. Below is a carrier-by-carrier breakdown of every confirmed 2026 Panama Canal surcharge announcement, why the ACP keeps adjusting draft limits, how the surcharges have stacked up over the year, and what to actually do about it before your next quote goes out.
This Article Covers
Every figure below is sourced from an official carrier notice or a named trade publication, with the publication date noted. Where a carrier hasn’t published a 2026 figure, we say so explicitly rather than guessing — stale or invented numbers in a rate sheet are worse than a gap.
A few things worth flagging before you copy these into a quote:
These surcharges aren’t arbitrary — they’re a direct pass-through of a physical constraint. The Panama Canal Authority has made its fourth and fifth draft adjustments of 2026 in the space of about a week: the maximum authorized draft at the Neopanamax locks was cut to 48 ft (14.63 m) effective August 26, then further to 47.5 ft (14.48 m) effective September 3, 2026.
The cause is low water levels in Gatun Lake, driven by an El Niño-linked dry pattern, with water-conservation measures that the ACP has had in place since December 2025. Importantly, the number of daily transit slots hasn’t been cut — only the maximum draft per vessel.
Here’s the mechanism that turns a water-level problem into a line item on your invoice:
Separately, there’s been trade press coverage of premium slot auctions at the canal — Splash247 reported a record $4 million neopanamax slot bid in May 2026, with average premiums rising from a pre-crisis $135–140k baseline to $385–425k. It’s worth being precise here: that reporting is about tanker and dry-bulk slot auctions responding to Strait of Hormuz-related rerouting, not a direct driver of the container-line TEU surcharges above. The two pressures — drought-driven draft cuts and geopolitically-driven slot competition — are related but distinct, and conflating them overstates the case to a client asking “why.”
Rather than one abstract cause, this is a story of compounding announcements. Here’s the sequence so far:
The pattern is clear: each draft cut has been followed within days by a fresh or increased carrier surcharge. If that correlation holds, forwarders should expect this list to keep growing through Q4 2026 rather than stabilizing.
Given how fast this list has changed since July, treating any single snapshot — including this one — as permanent is the biggest risk in your workflow right now. A few concrete steps:
1. What Is the Current Panama Canal Surcharge for 2026?
There is no single “the” surcharge — each carrier has published its own. As of September 2026, confirmed figures are CMA CGM at $500/TEU (effective Sept 10), MSC at $149/TEU / $297/FEU (effective Sept 12, after an earlier $100 gate-in charge), Hapag-Lloyd at $130/TEU (effective Aug 15), and ONE at $150/TEU (effective Aug 10). Maersk and COSCO have not published confirmed 2026 figures.
2. Why Are Panama Canal Surcharges Increasing in 2026?
The Panama Canal Authority has cut the maximum authorized vessel draft twice in quick succession in 2026 — to 48 ft in late August and 47.5 ft in early September — due to low water levels in Gatun Lake linked to an El Niño dry pattern. Lower draft means less cargo per vessel, which raises the cost per container and gets passed through as a surcharge.
3. Do These Surcharges Apply to All Asia-US Routes?
No. Each carrier’s surcharge applies to specific trade lanes and often carries exclusions — for example, CMA CGM’s fee excludes Bangladesh-to-USEC cargo, and ONE’s fee excludes Puerto Rico. Always check the specific lane and routing before assuming a surcharge applies.
4. Will Panama Canal Surcharges Go Away Once Water Levels Recover?
Possibly, but there’s no confirmed timeline. Given that two draft cuts have landed within six weeks of each other in 2026, and that surcharges have followed each cut within days, forwarders should plan for these costs to persist through at least Q4 2026 rather than assuming a quick reversal.
5. How Often Is This Guide Updated?
This guide is reviewed and updated monthly as carriers announce new rates, with a changelog tracking what’s changed since the last revision. Bookmark this page rather than a single carrier bulletin, since most surcharge coverage on other sites goes stale within weeks of a new announcement.
Aug 18, 2026 — Initial publication. Confirmed figures for CMA CGM, MSC, Hapag-Lloyd, and ONE
Flagged Maersk and COSCO as unconfirmed pending official carrier notices.
The figures on this page will change. That is the point of it. What decides whether a draft cut costs you margin is not how fast you read the announcement — it is how many open quotes carry a number that was correct a fortnight ago, and how long it takes one person to find and re-date them all. Centralised rate and surcharge management turns that from a manual sweep into a single update that flows into every live quote.
Want to see it against your own lanes? Book a demo and ask to see a mid-month surcharge change propagate into open quotations without anyone re-keying a rate sheet.
Or start with the numbers — Shipthis pricing is $89 per user per month, every module included.
