The World Found a Way Around the Suez Canal. Now It's Coming Back.
In October 2026, Suez Canal revenues surged 94% compared with a year earlier, while the number of vessels passing through increased 32%. More tellingly, shipping tonnage jumped 86%, suggesting that larger vessels are increasingly returning to the route.
For nearly three years, global shipping companies have been taking the long way around Africa to avoid the security risks of the Red Sea. The alternative worked, but it came at a price: longer journeys, higher operating costs, and disrupted shipping schedules.
Now, the ships are returning.
In October 2026, Suez Canal revenues surged **94% compared with a year earlier**, while the number of vessels passing through increased 32%. More tellingly, shipping tonnage jumped 86%, suggesting that larger vessels are increasingly returning to the route.
What makes this remarkable is that the region's security risks have not entirely disappeared.
The crisis demonstrated that the world can bypass the Suez Canal. But the return of shipping traffic reveals something equally important: **being able to bypass a route doesn't make the alternative economically attractive.**
For a major Asia–Europe voyage, sailing around Africa can add roughly ten days. Multiply that by thousands of ships carrying goods across the world, and geography becomes an enormous economic advantage.
Egypt spent years watching global shipping adapt to life without its canal. Yet as conditions improve, the economic incentive to return is proving difficult to resist.
The Suez Canal's greatest strength may not be that the world cannot function without it, but that the world has little reason to avoid it when passage is sufficiently safe.
Suez Canal Authority figures, reported November 5, 2026 UNCTAD — Review of Maritime Transport 2024, shipping distances and costs
Signed opinion by Hamzah Karajah. The views are the author's own.