The cruise industry in southern Europe and the mid-Atlantic is placing its center of gravity in the Canary Islands. The MedCruise association of cruise ports and the Seatrade Cruise events platform are celebrating their joint 30th anniversary as part of Seatrade Cruise Med 2026, a professional event to be held on September 16 and 17 at the Santa Catalina terminal of Las Palmas Cruise Port. This information was independently produced by the Canarymaritime newsroom according to exclusively editorial criteria, without commercial consideration or any affiliation with the entities mentioned.
The coincidence of both anniversaries underscores the evolution of the Mediterranean and its adjacent basins as the world’s second-largest cruise market. At this island edition, MedCruise will have a prominent institutional presence: it will host the fair’s second-largest pavilion—behind only the host organization, Las Palmas Cruise Port—bringing together 18 port authorities and operators from 22 countries. Entities represented at booths 1E31 and 1E40 will include key ports on the international circuit such as Marseille, Barcelona, Gibraltar, Corsica, Toulon, Heraklion and Koper, along with auxiliary service and shipping agency companies.
Executive roadmap and debate in the conference areas
The event’s operational program will begin on Tuesday, September 15, with the closed-door 69th General Assembly of MedCruise, reserved for its members. The public agenda will formally begin on September 16 in the Lanzarote Room with remarks by the association’s president, Theodora Riga, who will join Mary Bond, Seatrade Cruise’s group director, in the opening session on the state of the cruise industry in the region.
More than 20 association speakers will take part in 15 technical analysis panels. Board members including Joško Šupe, Lorenzo Vera Franco, Luz Marina Espiau Moreno, Dario Barbarić, Valeria Mangiarotti and Anne-Marie Spinosi will address critical issues for the sector, including berth electrification (cold ironing), fleet decarbonization, the socioeconomic impact on destinations, the integration of artificial intelligence into port operations, and the development of the expedition cruise segment and the Atlantic region.
Destination governance and socioeconomic impact metrics
The Gran Canaria gathering will also host a working meeting of MedCruise’s Economic Impact Assessment Group on September 17. In parallel, the debate sessions will feature executives from port authorities such as Valencia, the Azores and Dubrovnik, as well as terminal operators including Global Cruises, Intercruises and CTI, to examine long-term value creation and the governance of cruise calls. The meeting reaffirms the role of Canarian port infrastructure as a leading logistics and commercial hub relative to traditional Mediterranean routes and the western African coast, at a time when the industry is seeking to reconcile traffic capacity with environmental requirements and community sustainability.
The article MedCruise and Seatrade Cruise mark three decades of strategic partnership in the Canary Islands was first published on canarymaritime.com.
