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The 10 Countries With the World's Largest Merchant Fleets |
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UNCTAD published its 2025 shipping review in September. It ranks the world's merchant fleets by the flag each ship flies — the country where it is registered. The three biggest aren't shipping powers. They are Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands, a Pacific nation of about 40,000 people. |
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Source: UNCTAD Review of Maritime Transport 2025 (released Sept 2025). Fleet by flag of registration, million tonnes deadweight, as of 1 Jan 2025. |
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| What's Surprising |
Liberia flies the world's largest merchant fleet: 424 million tonnes of cargo capacity, from a West African country with almost no ships of its own and no shipbuilding to speak of. Panama is second, the Marshall Islands third. Three small states carry nearly half the world's shipping.
None of them owns much of it. These are open registries — flags of convenience. An owner in Athens or Tokyo registers a ship in Monrovia or Majuro for lighter taxes, cheaper crews and looser rules, and flies that flag instead of home.
The Marshall Islands is the sharpest case. About 40,000 people live there. Its fleet, 305 million tonnes, is more than nine times the combined fleets of the United States, Britain and Germany.
| What's Not Surprising |
The real owners are who you'd expect. By owner nationality, Greece leads with 16.4% of world capacity, then China and Japan. The ships are Greek, Chinese and Japanese. The flags they fly are not.
Flags of convenience are an old American idea. The United States helped set up the Liberian registry in 1948, and a former U.S. Secretary of State drafted its code. Liberia's registry is still run from Virginia today — and so is the Marshall Islands', out of a Washington suburb.
The pattern holds. The top ten flags carry 77% of world capacity, and more than 80% of world trade by volume moves by sea. Ships run the global economy. Most just don't fly the flag of anywhere they belong.
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424 million Tonnes of cargo capacity registered in Liberia — the world's largest merchant fleet. Almost none of the ships are Liberian, and the country builds none. |
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40,000 People who live in the Marshall Islands, which flies the world's third-largest fleet — 305 million tonnes of shipping. |
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Nearly half Of the world's shipping capacity flies under just three flags: Liberia, Panama and the Marshall Islands. |
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16.4% Greece's share of the world fleet by owner, the largest of any nation. Its own flag ranks only ninth. |
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13 million Tonnes under the U.S. flag — the world's biggest economy, with a fleet about one-thirtieth the size of Liberia's. |
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UNCTAD's next review lands in 2026. Two things to track. First, whether Liberia keeps pulling away — it passed Panama for the top spot only recently and is still growing. Second, Western efforts to sanction the shadow fleet of tankers moving Russian oil under flags of convenience, and to pull ships back under national flags. Either could redraw this list. We'll be watching. |
