Carnival is cutting Carnival Luminosa’s Aussie season by two months – here’s why

• Carnival Luminosa will shorten it’s Australia season for 2026/27.
• The season will be about two months shorter than usual.
• Cruise Passenger analysis shows that this is because cruise lines are preferring to pivot ships to the USA west coast, prioritising sailings there over Australia.

Carnival’s latest announcement of American may determine the line’s plans for the future of ships in Australia.

Cruises out of the West Coast of the USA down into Mexico’s Pacific Coast have been on the rise, with cruise lines like Royal Caribbean and Carnival homeporting more and more ships out of Los Angeles and even San Diego, to cater for this new demand. 

Royal Caribbean and Carnival both run these cruises year round, and Royal Caribbean often alternate ships with Australia, with ships like Quantum of the Seas and Voyager of the Seas bouncing between Australia and the West Coast of the USA as homeports.

Carnival appears to be leaning this way as well, with Carnival Luminosa set to spend the next two Aussie winters cruising out of San Francisco. However, the more that Carnival invests into this region, the less cruising we’ll see out of Australia.

Carnival Luminosa will cut its Australia 2026/27 short about two months, so that the ship can spend extra time sailing out of San Francisco instead. 

For example, for Luminosa’s first two seasons in Australia, it sailed here for a season of about six months for the season of 2023/24. Carnival Luminosa sailed a season of 169 days in Australia, from October 15, 2023 to April 1, 2024.

For the 2026/27 season, Carnival Luminosa will sail from December 14 until April 6, a season of just 113 days. This is 56 days less, which is just under two months, and represents a season 33% shorter than the 2023/24 season. 

There are a few reasons why this might be worrying to Australian cruisers and the local cruise industry in general.

The first reason is of course that it simply means less options for Aussie cruisers, and a slightly longer off-season for cruises out of Brisbane, which has only Carnival Encounter as a year-round ship.

However, also important to note is that it does show a continuation in Carnival decreasing their overall presence in Australia. 

For the 2023/2024 season, not only was Luminosa sailing a longer season, but Carnival, including the three P&O ships (P&O is owned by Carnival Corp), had a total of four ships sailing here year-round, Carnival Splendor, Pacific Explorer, Pacific Adventure and Pacific Encounter. 

Now Australia has three year-round ships, Splendor, Adventure and Encounter and a shortened Luminosa season.

Princess Cruises, who are also owned by Carnival Corp, has also decreased the number of vessels from four-ships homeported in Australia for the 2023/24 season, to just two ships, for this upcoming season and 2026/27. 

Across the three brands in total this is a drop from nine ships to six, as well a shorter season for Carnival Luminosa. 

It’s no secret that Australia’s cruise industry has been doing it tough, and a shorter Carnival Luminosa season is just another piece of evidence that until something is done, Australia will keep losing ships and sailings. 

Another worry is that, due to favourable weather conditions the Mexican sailings out of the USA west coast, run year-round. This means that if that region continues to prove fruitful for cruise lines and they continue to face few regulatory difficulties, it’s possible that cruise lines like Carnival and Royal Caribbean will shift more and more ships there. If the worrying trend continues, we could soon see a ship like Carnival Luminosa sailing year-round out of San Francisco and cutting Australia entirely.