If the lack of water resources that allow the transit of ships in the Panama Canal is not yet similar to the one that occurred at the turn of 2023 and 2024 which had forced the authority that regulates ship traffic into the Central American waterway to impose limitations on both the draught of ships authorised to transit and their daily number, however, today the situation seems to be directed towards a scenario analogous.

In the second quarter of this year, the channel was crossed by a total of 3,612 ships, with an increase of +9.6% over the same period of 2025, of which 3,285 at high draught (+11.9%), carrying a total of 73.2 million tons of goods (+20.7%). However, this growth in traffic has is carried out in the first two months of the quarter, as The transits of 1,030 ships were recorded in June 2026, of which 975 at the high draught, with slight increases of +1.0% and +3.6% compared to June last year.

Currently, the Panama Canal Authority, for the purpose of prevent any future critical situations, can limit itself to imposing only limits on the draught of vessels authorized for transit thanks to the water reserves accumulated in the 2025. So on Wednesday the authority announced two new reductions in the maximum authorised draught for vessels pass through the Neopanamax locks that will come into force on next August 26, when the maximum draught limit will become of 14.63 meters, and next September 3, when it will descend further to 14.48 meters. These are the fourth and fifth measures for the management and conservation of water resources introduced by the Authority since the end of last year. If to date The Authority limited itself to establishing limits on the draught of ships, however, did not rule out future restrictions also on daily transits of ships if the forecasts of the phenomenon El Niño climate will be confirmed. The administrator of the Panama Canal Authority, Ricaurte Vásquez Morales, in fact, recalled that the forecast on the impact of the phenomenon on the water reserves that feed the canal indicated the last April that the likelihood of such an impact being Severo was 25%, while last month it rose to 81% in view of the lower rainfall expected.

Meanwhile, in the first half of 2026 the channel recorded overall the transits of 7,343 ships, of which 6,463 at high draught, with increases of +7.1% and +8.3% respectively on the first half of last year. Ships transited transported 145.1 million tons of goods globally (+20,3%).