Did You Know?
The Cruise Capital of the World Came Second
1. 8,564,225 people boarded or left a cruise ship at PortMiami in fiscal 2025.
That is the official figure for Fiscal Year 2025, running from 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025 — a record, up 4.02% on the previous year's 8,233,056.
Divide it by the days and it comes to roughly 23,500 people a day, every day, moving through one port.
2. It was still not the busiest cruise port in the world.
Port Canaveral, 350 kilometres up the same coast, recorded 8,602,047 passenger movements in the same fiscal year.
The margin is 37,822 people — out of 8.6 million, a difference of about 0.44%. It is the second time Canaveral has taken the title; the first was in 2022.
PortMiami's registered slogan is still Cruise Capital of the World®. The trademark is intact. The ranking, for now, is not.
3. The cargo side crossed a million containers for the eleventh year running.
1,115,058 TEUs in FY2025, up 2.35%. The port supports over 340,000 jobs and is Florida's largest international cargo gateway.
4. And the terminals keep getting larger.
MSC opened what it describes as the world's largest cruise terminal in early 2025: 492,678 square feet, designed to handle three ships at once and up to 36,000 embarking and disembarking passengers in a day. Royal Caribbean's Terminal G is due in late 2027.
The clock: Miami sits at about 80° west, on Eastern Time, which is calculated for the 75th meridian. That leaves the city roughly 21 minutes ahead of its own solar noon.
The port itself runs on a much tighter schedule than that. Cruise ships turn around on fixed weekly cycles — the same ships, the same days, the same berths — which is why a number as large as 23,500 people a day can be predicted a year in advance.
So: a port that moves the population of a small city every day, on a timetable set twelve months ahead, holding a trademark for a title it currently does not hold.
Sources
- Miami-Dade County official press release, December 2, 2025 (fiscal year 2025: 8,564,225 cruise passengers, up 4.02% from 8,233,056 in the previous year, the highest annual number in the port's history; 1,115,058 TEUs, up 2.35%, 11th consecutive year over one million)
- Seatrade Cruise and UPI (Port Canaveral being the world's busiest cruise port with 8,602,047 passenger movements in the same fiscal year; second time to claim the title, first in 2022)
- Royal Caribbean Blog (MSC's 492,678-square-foot Terminal AA opened in March; three ships at a time, up to 36,000 passengers per day; Terminal G target by 2027)
- Hoodline / PortMiami (more than 340,000 jobs)
- Longitude calculation: Miami 80.2°W, Eastern Time meridian 75°W → ~21 minutes