The Decade's Biggest Shift in Container Shipping: What Happened in 2025 and What to Expect in 2026

Published: January 24, 2026

The global container shipping industry underwent its biggest structural transformation in a decade during 2025—and most companies didn't fully realize it was happening.

When Maersk and MSC dissolved their 2M alliance, it wasn't just two carriers parting ways. It was a complete rewrite of how the industry operates. Routes changed. Transit times were recalculated. Direct port calls became hub transshipments. And if your supply chain team is still working with 2024 data, you're heading into 2026 with outdated assumptions.

Let's look at what happened in 2025 and what the year ahead might bring.

2025: The Alliance Map Was Redrawn

The End of 2M, the Beginning of New Competition

When the 2M alliance ended in January 2025, two very different visions emerged:

Maersk and Hapag-Lloyd launched Gemini Cooperation in February. The concept is straightforward but radical: fewer mainline loops, more disciplined rotations, hub-and-shuttle architecture. The goal? Protect schedule reliability. The trade-off? Transshipment instead of direct calls on many lanes.

MSC went the opposite direction: broad, independent network maximizing direct port coverage.

The difference between these two models isn't just operational—it's philosophical. One says "let's guarantee on-time arrival," the other says "let's go everywhere directly." Which one wins in 2026? We'll find out.

Premier Alliance: THE Alliance Continues

ONE, HMM, and Yang Ming came together to form Premier Alliance. They're maintaining substantial vessel-sharing capacity across Asia-US and Asia-Europe trades, but service configurations and port coverage have changed.

Ocean Alliance: Stability Over Change

CMA CGM, COSCO, Evergreen, and OOCL took a different approach: change nothing. They extended their cooperation through 2032. While new networks go through trial and error, they said "our model works" and carried on.

What Changed in Practice?

Coverage Didn't Disappear—It Relocated

Here's what most companies missed: service coverage didn't vanish in 2025, it just moved. Some port pairs gained frequency, others lost direct calls. A carrier that's strong on Singapore-Los Angeles might be weak on Shanghai-Hamburg now.

Bottom line: "We work with carrier X" is no longer a sufficient answer. The right question is: "Which carriers are strong on which of your lanes?"

Transshipment Risk Became Concentrated

Hub models can protect mainline schedules, but they centralize risk. A terminal congestion in Singapore now affects not just one lane, but every service routing through it.

Many companies shifted to one-transshipment routings in 2025. Network coverage improved, but connection risk came with it. A missed feeder can delay delivery by a full week.

Variance Matters More Than Average Transit Time

2025's most frustrating lesson: Nominal transit time might look the same, but performance can be completely different.

If a route shows 18 days on paper but sometimes takes 16 days and sometimes 23, you can't plan around that route. Smart logistics teams stopped optimizing for "average days" and started building buffers for variance.

Reliability Is Now an Operations Issue, Not Marketing

Carriers didn't just reposition ships in 2025—they repositioned their value proposition. Gemini in particular made schedule performance central to all its messaging and started sharing reliability metrics regularly.

Whether this actually works will be tested in 2026. When peak season arrives, when hubs get congested, when schedule slippages begin—that's when we'll see.

What to Watch in 2026

Will the Networks Hold or Keep Changing?

2026 is the first full-year test of the new alliance networks. Peak season, contract negotiations, operational disruptions—all are coming. The real question: will service strings stay stable, or will carriers keep adjusting throughout the year?

Frequent rotation changes invalidate planning models and make forecasting nearly impossible. Stability is now a competitive advantage.

The Suez Card Is Still in Play

The biggest uncertainty entering 2026 is the Suez Canal. Even a partial industry return would rewrite all schedules, shift capacity balance, and determine which hubs become strategically important.

Most services are currently routing via Cape of Good Hope. But carrier guidance is evolving. Smart companies are planning for both scenarios.

Hub Performance Will Define Service Quality

If your cargo moves through transshipment hubs, your real service level depends on hub performance. Watch dwell times at critical points like Singapore, Colombo, Tanjung Pelepas, and Algeciras.

When hubs get stressed, delays cascade rapidly because multiple services converge at the same location.

The Rate Environment Stays Unpredictable

Heading into 2026, the rate environment remains difficult to forecast. Capacity has been added, but demand is uneven, and geopolitical disruptions—whether in the Red Sea, Panama Canal, or elsewhere—can tighten space quickly.

The era of predictable annual contracts appears to be over. Flexibility and scenario planning are now baseline requirements.

What Companies Should Do?

Know Your Lanes

Not all alliances are equally strong on all routes. Map where your critical port pairs sit within each network and which carriers have genuine operational strength—not just theoretical coverage.

Understand Your Transshipment Exposure

Document which hubs your cargo touches and how connection delays would cascade. Prioritize lanes where a single missed connection creates major downstream problems.

Build Contracts Around Optionality

Single-carrier strategies are harder to defend when networks are still settling. Split allocations where it makes sense, and negotiate flexibility provisions—alternative routings, optional gateways, split sailings.

Update Your Data

Alliance changes brought new service names, different terminals, revised cutoffs. Make sure your transit tables and performance scorecards reflect current reality, not the pre-2025 network.

Plan for Disruption

Peak season stress-tests every network. Pre-align contingency plans with your forwarders and carriers before capacity tightens.

Movargo's 2026 Content Roadmap

This article is a starting point. In the coming months, we'll dive deeper into the topics that matter most:

• How hub-based networks are performing under real operating conditions

• Suez routing developments and their impact on Asia-Europe capacity

• Contract strategy in the post-reshuffle environment

• Red Sea alternatives and their cost-time implications

• Regional spotlight: How Southeast Asian and Mediterranean hubs are absorbing increased transshipment volumes

Each of these topics deserves its own analysis, and we'll be covering them as 2026 unfolds.

Beyond that, next-generation topics are waiting in the wings: the rise of digital platforms, AI-powered operations, rapidly evolving business models, and new market entrants. Stay tuned.

Final Word

2025 rewrote the map of container shipping. 2026 will show whether that map holds.

For companies, the difference between stability and chaos will come down to how well transshipment risk is managed, how quickly assumptions are updated, and how strategically volume is allocated.

The networks are new. The playbook is still being written. And the year ahead will reveal which designs were built to last—and which weren't.

Need help navigating the 2026 ocean freight environment? 

Movargo works with shippers to map alliance coverage, quantify risk, and build contracting strategies that protect service levels while maintaining cost discipline. Get in touch to discuss your 2026 strategy.