Port Canaveral is set to bathe in the spoils of another record year of cruise traffic with a fiscal budget for 2026 projected to hit nearly $240 million in operating revenue.
More than $200 million of that is from cruise-related income from a record projected 9 million passenger movements, which counts people both when they get on and off a ship, as well as a parking fee increase from $17 to $20.
Overall operating revenue is projected to hit $237.4 million, with operating expenses to hit $159.2 million leaving $78.3 in operating income. After nonoperating revenue and expenses, the port would end the year with a net position of $72.1 million.
“Keep in mind, every dollar that we make here at the port is reinvested back into the port in projects, infrastructure, etc.,” said port chief financial officer Jeff Long.
The budget also includes a proposed $258 million to be spent on capital projects, including $98 million to continue projects begun in 2025 such as redoing the parking garages on the north side of the port.
Long had outlined the need to raise parking fees to commissioners in August when the budget was first introduced. Noting the port had not raised parking rates since 2017, it did a six-month analysis looking at major cruise ports, airports as well as off-site parking from third parties.
“What we found doing this analysis was and it was crystal clear: our $17 rate is too low, it is below market,” Long said. “It will allow us to further invest dollars into infrastructure and additional parking that we need down the road.”
Port authority commissioners passed the budget in a 4-1 vote Wednesday with with commissioners Wayne Justice, Jerry Allender, Micah Loyd and Kevin Markey voting in favor and Commissioner Fritz VanVolkenburgh against.
VanVolkenburgh took issue with the proposed increase in operating expenses, saying they were beyond what was needed. He noted 2019’s port numbers showed expenses were 81% of revenue, but that in 2024 and 2025 so far, the port was able to drop that to 61%. The new budget raises that to 67%, and it would have been 69% if not for the parking fee increase.
“I think we’re going in the wrong direction in terms of economies of scale, in terms of being able to stay within what I think is an appropriate budget,” he said.
Port Canaveral CEO Capt. John Murray said the port needs to get ahead of preventative maintenance at its six terminals, which are near full usage.
“Many of our expenses are directly tied to the level of business tempo that we have right now. We’re highly utilizing our assets,” he said. “That’s all baked into the budget right now, but we’re operating a very different tempo than we did back in 2019 and I think that is largely driving our expense bucket, but it’s also driving our revenue bucket.”
He noted cruise terminal 5 is projected to be in use six days a week, for instance.
“At the utilization factor that we have in our terminals, we are, I can say definitively, higher than any other port in the state of Florida, on our cruise terminals,” Murray said. “It takes money to keep them going and not to have system failures during operations. That is the kiss of death for us, so we are putting the money where it needs to be to make our operations as successful as they are.”
Murray updated numbers 11 months through the 2025 fiscal year, from October 2024-August 2025, noting the port already had 966 ship calls surpassing 8 million multiday passenger movements. The 2025 budget had forecast more than 1,000 port calls to top 8.4 million passengers.
“We’re holding very, very strong on our passenger counts this year, and I think we will, well, I can confirm that we will exceed our budgeted count for the year,” he said.
Driving some of that record traffic was the arrival of the world’s largest cruise ship, Royal Caribbean’s Star of the Seas, which added five more sailings than originally budgeted.
In the last year, the port welcomed regular sailings for the first time from both Princess Cruises and Celebrity Cruises, on top of new and additional ships across its existing brands including the debuts of Disney Treasure and Norwegian Aqua.
For fiscal 2026, new and larger ships are expected from both MSC Cruises with the arrival of MSC Grandiosa and Princess with the debut of Sky Princess. Carnival and Royal Caribbean expect to keeping leading deployment with five ships at the port, followed by Disney’s three and NCL and MSC with two, and single ships from Princess and Celebrity.
