Royal Caribbean orders two more of the “world’s biggest ships” – but rival lines are coming for their title

• Royal Caribbean has announced the order of two more Icon-class ships.
• By 2030, Royal Caribbean will have a total of seven Icon-class ships as part of its fleet.
• However, from 2029, Carnival and MSC will begin challenging Royal Caribbean for the title of the world’s biggest ships.

Royal Caribbean will simply not stop delivering massive new megaships as part of its Icon Class. Royal Caribbean already has two Icon-Class class ships in operation, and another one coming this year, plus a fourth and fifth ship coming in 2027 and 2028.

Now they’ve just announced that a sixth and seventh Icon-class ship are coming as well, set to be delivered in 2029 and 2030. 

This means that by 2030 Royal Caribbean will have seven of these megaships sailing, which can each take around 7600 passengers. Having seven of these ships will mean Royal Caribbean will be able to have a massive 53,200 people sailing on their Icon-class ships at one time. 

Icon of the Seas was the first to take the world by storm when it started sailing in 2024 and became the world’s biggest cruise ship, and Star of the Seas joined the party in 2025. Legend of the Seas is coming in a few months and Hero of the Seas will follow up in 2027. 

While the ships are almost exactly the same size, each new ship is being improved upon with new features, additions and fix ups. 

The race for the biggest ships in the world 

When Royal Caribbean’s 2028 Icon ship starts sailing, Royal Caribbean will have the five equal biggest ships in the world, however, from 2029 onwards, things will get a bit interesting.

Carnival is planning to build massive new ships as part of ‘Project Ace’, with ships set to have a capacity of nearly 8000 passengers, beating the Icon-class ships which max out at about 7600 people.

Project Ace aims to roll out ships in 2029, 2031 and 2033, with a projected gross tonnage of about 230,000 per ship, compared to the 250,000 that Icon of the Seas has.. This would mean the ships would have more capacity than Royal Caribbean’s, but less gross tonnage, giving both lines a claim to having the biggest in the world.

However, there’s another player who shakes this equation up, which is MSC Cruises. MSC is planning on building a Constellation class, involving massive newbuilds, which are set to tip the scales at 265,000 gross tonnage and outweigh Royal Caribbean’s Icon-class ships. 

Now, it should be noted that ship projections don’t always work out in reality and the capacity and tonnage of these planned Carnival and MSC ships may not be delivered upon. Royal Caribbean has shown themselves capable of doing it and is ahead by far right now.

However, there’s also a scenario where these new builds go ahead as planned and suddenly Carnival has the ships with the most capacity at sea and MSC the ships with the most gross tonnage.

In this case, Royal Caribbean might have to rethink its claim to having the “biggest cruise ships at sea”, although whether this is something they consider a serious concern, only Royal Caribbean could answer. Given that these two newly announced Icon ships are the first that will be arriving in the same years as MSC and Carnival’s megaships start rolling out, there’ll be plenty of people keenly awaiting further details on the new ships.

Royal Caribbean may make these newly announced ships even bigger than other Icon-class ships, rather than risk losing its crown as the cruise line with the world’s biggest ships.