Madeira Cruise Statistics 2026: A 791,707-Passenger Record and What the €62.8M Really Counts

Two counters, three numbers for the same year

Madeira's cruise traffic is counted twice. APRAM (Administração dos Portos da Região Autónoma da Madeira) counts every passenger on every ship that calls, and reports crew separately. DREM, the Direção Regional de Estatística da Madeira, publishes "passengers in transit on cruise ships" using APRAM's data, excludes crew, and runs 2–4% below APRAM. Both record a passenger once per call, so someone on a ship that calls twice in a fortnight is counted twice.

For calendar 2025 that produces three numbers. APRAM's all-port total is 746,257. Cruise Atlantic Islands, the regional ports association, reports Funchal alone at 744,699. DREM's transit count is 729,765, of which 728,212 were at Funchal. Each is correct for its own definition. The difference matters most when growth rates are compared across sources: DREM has 2025 up 1.8%, APRAM has it up 2.4%.

APRAM also reports by season, from 1 September to 31 May, because that is when ships come. The season framing is APRAM's choice for its year-end headline, and the figure most often repeated in English-language media. It does not line up with any calendar statistic, which is how a season total ends up quoted as an annual one.

The series: from 113,824 to a record

DREM's series shows how far Madeira has come. Transit passengers reached 526,957 in 2011 and 579,686 in 2012, then fell 18.8% to 472,362 in 2013. They recovered to 588,925 in 2019, the pre-pandemic peak. The pandemic cut traffic to about 143,200 in 2020 and 113,824 in 2021, an 80.7% drop on 2019. APRAM counted 117,289 that year, of which 114,767 were at Funchal and 2,522 at Porto Santo.

The rebound came fast. APRAM counted 417,730 passengers in 2022. DREM recorded 615,689 in 2023, up 50.1% and the first year above the 2019 peak, which DREM called the highest on record. Then 716,806 in 2024 (+16.4%) and 729,765 in 2025 (+1.8%). On APRAM's count the steps were 728,604 in 2024, the first year above 700,000, and 746,257 in 2025.

Ship calls tell a different story. Madeira had 339 calls in 2012 and has not matched that in any calendar year since: 298 in 2019, 316 in 2024 and 331 in 2025. Only the 2025/26 season, with 344 calls, beats 2012, and it is a different window. More passengers on fewer ships means bigger ships. In 2025 the average call brought about 2,250 passengers, against about 1,710 in 2012 (derived). On 1 December 2025 four ships were alongside at once, AIDAcosma (5,787 passengers), Mein Schiff Relax (3,923), Azura (3,003) and Silver Whisper (320), for 13,033 passengers and 4,335 crew.

2026 began even stronger. APRAM counted 335,748 passengers on 129 calls in the first quarter, up 24.79%; January and February alone brought 227,049 passengers on 85 calls. DREM's first-half figure is 443,355 transit passengers on 199 ships, up 18.5%. Our arithmetic gives +25.8% for the first quarter against APRAM's own Q1 2025 figure of 266,964, which suggests that base was later revised to about 269,000.

The season that set the headline, and the one that beat it

APRAM closed the 2024/25 season with a press release on 8 July 2025. It reported 743,699 passengers, up 23.05% on 604,370 in 2023/24, and 335 calls against 254. Crew rose 26.71%. The port authority's president, Paula Cabaço, called it "by far the best season". The arithmetic on passengers checks out. The arithmetic on calls does not: 335 against 254 is +31.9%, while the release says +17.13%. Either the base or the rate is wrong, and APRAM has not corrected it.

Eleven months later APRAM restated that season at 744,855 passengers and 227,281 crew, and announced its successor. The 2025/26 season, September 2025 to May 2026, brought 791,707 passengers, 295,180 crew and 344 calls. The release's +6.29% is measured against the restated base; against the original 743,699 it is +6.46% (derived). The Regional Secretary for Economy, José Manuel Rodrigues, described Funchal as the country's main cruise port.

So the title figure of this article, which came from our own planning document, fails as a current record. It was the record when it was published in July 2025. It has been superseded since June 2026, and in calendar terms it was never a record at all, because calendar 2025 closed at 746,257. We have changed the title.

What €62.8 million actually measures

The €62.8 million attached to the 2024/25 season is often described as regional economic impact. It is narrower than that. APRAM's release takes an average daily spend of €61.40 per passenger or crew member and multiplies it by the people who came ashore. The rate comes from ACIF, Funchal's commercial and industrial association, which surveyed 1,055 cruise visitors at the port between 16 April and 23 May 2022 under the EU-funded 4PORT project.

ACIF's survey split that spend into sightseeing (36.9%), shopping (29.2%), dining (21.7%), excursions (8.7%), nature activities (2.3%) and sea activities (1.3%). It is gross spending. It does not net out goods imported to the island, it does not apply a multiplier, it does not include port fees, and it has not been updated for four years of inflation. The same rate is applied to crew.

The method can be checked. For calendar 2024, APRAM's 728,604 passengers plus 271,974 crew make 1,000,578 people; at €61.40 that is €61.44 million, exactly the "€61.4 million direct impact" APRAM reported. For calendar 2025, 746,257 passengers plus 278,185 crew give €62.90 million, which matches the regional government's "about €63 million" at the CLIA European Summit in February 2026. For the 2024/25 season the numbers fit less well. €62.8 million implies about 1,022,800 people, or roughly 279,100 crew; the crew figure APRAM later published, 227,281, would give €59.6 million (derived).

Passengers alone, at the same rate, spent about €45.7 million in 2024/25 (derived). The rest, roughly €17 million or 27%, is attributed to crew. Officials have also quoted €60.1 and €60 per person, and "€65 million" for 2025, each attributed to an ACIF study. ACIF has announced a new study; none was published by October 2026.

APRAM's own finances show how little of the cruise money reaches the port authority. Its fourth-quarter 2024 report gives total revenue of €20.21 million and a net loss of €9.47 million. Passenger-traffic fees brought in €1.60 million and the ship-use tariff €1.48 million, and neither line is cruise-only, since both include the Porto Santo ferry. Shipping lines pay for berths. The spending ashore goes to shops, restaurants, tour operators and taxis.

Portugal's busiest cruise destination

The national picture puts Madeira at the top. INE counted 1,824,952 cruise passengers at Portuguese ports in 2024 on 965 ships, 89.7% of them in transit; Lisbon had 763,800, Funchal 725,800 and Leixões 195,300. No official national total for 2025 has been published. Adding Madeira (746,257), Lisbon (705,437), Leixões (about 225,000, APDL's year-end estimate), the Azores (157,685) and Portimão (23,996) gives about 1,858,400 (derived), close to the 1.86 million baseline implied by the Portuguese ports association's 2026 forecast of 1,970,275.

Lisbon's decline is the other half of the swap. The capital's 2025 headlines spoke of record passengers and 20% growth, but both refer to turnaround passengers, those starting or ending a cruise in the city, who reached 206,226. Transit passengers fell to 499,211, so the total dropped about 7.6% from 763,752. Our Lisbon tourism statistics analysis covers that mix shift in detail. Madeira's traffic is almost all transit: cruises starting or ending in Funchal rose 41% in 2025 to 31 calls, but turnaround has never been large, with about 7,978 embarkations at its 2011 peak.

Madeira's cruise visitors also differ from Lisbon's by nationality. DREM's 2025 data for Funchal show Germans at 38.6% of transit passengers (+15.8%) and British at 37.8% (−10.7%). Americans were 6.4% (−16.8%). Twelve years earlier the order was reversed, with the UK at 37.8% and Germany at 27.4%. The German lead mirrors Madeira's land market, where Germany is the island's top source of hotel nights, as our US vs Spain source-market comparison notes. AIDA and TUI Cruises, both German brands, were the two largest lines calling in 2022, the latest year for which APRAM published a ranking.

Madeira against the Canaries

Madeira sells the same product as the Canary Islands: winter sun, Atlantic itineraries that start in Tenerife, Gran Canaria or Lisbon, and calls a day apart. Cruise Atlantic Islands, which groups the ports of the Canaries, Madeira, the Azores and Cape Verde, counted 4,708,190 passengers in 2025, up 12.64% and 46.99% above 2019. Funchal ranked third among its island ports, behind Santa Cruz de Tenerife (1,126,092) and Las Palmas (994,954), and ahead of Arrecife in Lanzarote (663,396).

The growth rates diverged. The Canaries as a whole rose 16.2% to 3,708,841 according to Promotur, the islands' tourism body, using port-authority data; Santa Cruz de Tenerife rose 15.8% and La Palma 43%. Madeira rose 2.4%. Spain's port system as a whole passed 14.1 million cruise passengers in 2025. We found no published explanation for Madeira's slower calendar year. Its 2025/26 season grew 6.5%, so part of the gap reflects timing between seasons and calendar years.

Per resident, Madeira is heavily visited but not exceptional for the region. Its 746,257 passengers equal 2.88 per resident on DREM's population of 259,440 (derived). Lanzarote takes about 4.06 per resident, La Palma 4.27 and Fuerteventura 3.39. Tenerife's main port and Gran Canaria's take about 1.2. Lisbon takes about 1.29 per resident of the municipality and the Azores about 0.67 (derived from Census 2021 populations). Those ratios do not capture concentration. Nearly every cruise passenger in Madeira lands in one city, on a stretch of quay next to the old town.

A winter port

Madeira's cruise calendar is concentrated in winter. DREM's 2025 data give 374,058 transit passengers in the first half of the year and 326,270 in the fourth quarter, on 147 calls. That leaves about 29,437 for July to September, 4% of the year (derived). APRAM's January–October figure of 477,232 implies that November and December alone brought about 269,000 passengers, 36% of the annual total (derived). November 2024 set a monthly record of 145,232 passengers on 63 calls.

Lisbon's cruise season peaks the other way. APL's figures imply that about 59% of Lisbon's 2025 passengers came in the second half of the year (derived), and June 2026 set a monthly record for the capital at 81,735. For a Madeira hotel or tour operator, cruise traffic fills the months when long-stay winter guests are already on the island; for Madeira as a whole, it adds visitors in the season when the land market is not at its peak.

The busiest days come at New Year. On 31 December 2025, 11 cruise ships and the sailing vessel Santa Maria Manuela were in Funchal for the fireworks, with about 22,000 passengers and 8,000 crew; Silver Muse cancelled because of weather. The record remains 13 ships on New Year's Eve 2019, carrying 25,669 people. In 1998 six ships brought 4,703.

Overnight calls are growing faster than total calls. APRAM counted 88 overnight calls in 2024, and 172,396 passengers stayed overnight in Funchal in 2025, against 131,707 the year before. In the first quarter of 2026 there were 41 overnight calls against 27 (+51.8%), with 84,091 passengers staying overnight (+41%). The claim that overnight calls "doubled" in that quarter, carried by trade sites, does not match APRAM's own figures.

Crowding, emissions and the €2 tax

Funchal has charged cruise passengers since 1 January 2025. The municipal sea-arrival tax is €2 per disembarking passenger, collected by APRAM under a protocol with the city council. Crew, children up to 12, Madeira residents and people with a disability of 60% or more are exempt. The council forecast €1.2 million for 2025 on 600,000 disembarkations. On 746,257 passengers the ceiling would be about €1.49 million before exemptions (derived). The actual 2025 receipts have not been published. The overnight tourist tax of €2 per night, up to seven nights, has applied in Funchal since 1 October 2024. Lisbon has charged €2 per transit cruise passenger since 1 April 2024.

In January 2026 Funchal's executive proposed revising the tax regulation, including the rate. The opposition party JPP supported it and estimated about €14 million from both taxes in 2026, about 21% of municipal revenue. ACIF objected, citing an agreement among Madeira's councils to harmonise the tax; a DN Madeira fact-check found that agreement is not legally binding. We could not confirm a new rate or a decision by October 2026.

Emissions are the most contested number. A 2023 study by Transport & Environment, reported with the Portuguese group ZERO, ranked Funchal tenth among European ports for cruise-ship pollution on 2022 ship-tracking data, up from fifteenth in 2019. The study cited 96 calls; APRAM counted 302 at Funchal in 2022. The regional government rejected the ranking and cited air-quality monitoring showing good results. No tonnage figure for Funchal appeared in the coverage, and no independent local measurement has been published.

Shore power would address part of the problem, and Funchal's cruise berths do not have it. APRAM spent €1.4 million, half EU-funded, on a Green Ports Madeira study. In February 2026 the port authority said the feasibility work was complete and that it was still looking for funding for cruise berths; no cost or date has been announced. The only working connection, for the Porto Santo ferry Lobo Marinho, cost €3.6 million from the Recovery and Resilience Plan, went live on 24 October 2025 and saves more than 3,200 tonnes of CO₂ a year. The island's grid was 67.1% non-renewable in 2024, which limits the gain.

Crowding has no measured indicator either. A DN Madeira fact-check in September 2024 rated the claim that Madeira shows no sign of overtourism as false, citing queues for the Monte cable car on cruise days and noise complaints in the Zona Velha. The CLIA European Summit, held in Funchal in February 2026, discussed visitor-flow management and transparent use of cruise-tax revenue. Nobody proposed a cap on ships per day, and no carrying-capacity study exists for the port or the old town.

Cruise against the land economy

Set against the rest of Madeira's tourism, cruise is large in headcount and small in money. DREM counted 2.5 million guests in the region's tourist accommodation in 2025 (+8.9%), 12.9 million overnight stays (+7.9%) and €887.1 million in total accommodation revenue (+16.6%), of which €637.0 million was room revenue. Madeira airport handled 5.4 million passengers, up 12.2%, and Porto Santo airport 256,700.

On those numbers cruise passengers were about 23% of visitor arrivals in 2025 (derived, 729,765 against 2.5 million hotel guests). APRAM's €62.9 million spend estimate for the calendar year equals about 7.1% of accommodation revenue alone (derived). A hotel guest's accommodation spend averages about €355 per stay and €69 per night (derived), before meals, car hire or excursions; a cruise passenger's day ashore is valued at €61.40 including everything. DREM publishes no survey of total spending by overnight tourists, so a like-for-like comparison is not possible.

Cruise passengers also use the island's busiest places within a few hours. Shore excursions compete with hotel guests for the same sights, from Pico do Arieiro to the Monte cable car and the Mercado dos Lavradores. The 2.88 cruise passengers per resident sit on top of 20.8 airport passengers per resident (derived, 5.4 million against 259,440), a ratio below Lisbon's 54.9 but high for a region of Madeira's size.

What this means for travelers, businesses and analysts

Travelers. If you are staying in Funchal, check the port schedule before planning a day in the old town or a ride on the Monte cable car. Calls cluster between October and May, with November, December and the New Year week heaviest; four ships can land 13,000 passengers in one morning. July to September is almost cruise-free, with about 4% of the year's passengers. If you arrive by ship, Funchal's €2 sea-arrival tax applies when you disembark, and a multi-ship day is a good day to head inland instead of the waterfront. Our Lisbon travel guide covers the other end of many Atlantic itineraries.

Tourism businesses and investors. Madeira is now Portugal's largest cruise destination by passengers, with about 40% of the national total, but almost all of it is transit traffic spending a single day. Growth comes from bigger ships rather than more berths: calls are still below their 2012 level. The likely constraints are quay length, simultaneous berths and the old town on peak days; APRAM's plan to extend Pier 3 by about 400 metres and lengthen Pier 8 shows the port expects more ships. Watch three thresholds: a published cruise-tax rate above €2, any cap on daily calls, and a funded shore-power project with a date, which could reorder line deployment between Funchal and the Canaries. A spend model built on €61.40 is built on a 2022 survey; underwrite to passengers only, about €45 million a season, until ACIF publishes its new study.

Journalists and analysts. Citable figures: 746,257 cruise passengers in calendar 2025 (APRAM), 729,765 transit passengers (DREM), 331 calls; 791,707 passengers in the 2025/26 season (APRAM); 335,748 in Q1 2026 (+24.79%); 2.88 cruise passengers per resident (derived); Germany 38.6% and the UK 37.8% of Funchal's 2025 transit passengers (DREM). Do not repeat 743,699 as the current record; it is the 2024/25 season and has been surpassed. Do not call €62.8 million an economic impact study; it is a 2022 spend rate multiplied by passengers and crew. Do not describe Madeira's cruise visitors as "over a million" without saying that 278,185 are crew. The series finding this article adds: Portugal's busiest cruise destination has no published emissions figure, no tax-receipt figure and no visitor-capacity study.