China Port Congestion 2026: Why Shanghai and Ningbo Delays Are Turning Structural, Not Seasonal

For most of the year, congestion at China’s major container ports has followed a familiar rhythm: a typhoon hits, terminals close for a few days, and things gradually normalise once the storm clears. That pattern has broken down. Since July, Shanghai and Ningbo have been hit by a run of consecutive systems (Bavi, Dolphin, Saudel and now Krovanh) and the gap between each storm hasn’t been long enough for the backlog to clear before the next one arrives.

The result is a level of congestion that’s no longer just a weather story. It’s becoming a capacity and scheduling problem that’s likely to shape ocean freight out of China through the rest of the year.

At a Glance

The current numbers at Shanghai and Ningbo

As of early September, the scale of the backlog is significant across every measure that matters to shippers.

Some individual terminals are running well past the port-wide averages. Waiting times at a number of Shanghai’s terminals have topped nine days after reopening, and at points this season some Yangshan berths have reported waits closer to 12 days. Ningbo is carrying a similar strain, with reefer plug utilisation and yard density both running near capacity, meaning even a short additional closure has very little slack to absorb it.

Typhoon Season

Why this season is different

Individually, each storm this season has behaved fairly normally: a landfall, a 24–78 hour closure, then a reopening. What’s unusual is the spacing. Terminals typically need one to two weeks to work through the backlog from a single closure (bunched vessels, high yard density, delayed trucking) before they’re back to a stable baseline. This year, the next storm has consistently arrived before that recovery finishes, so each closure is stacking on top of the last one rather than starting from a clean slate.

Sea-Intelligence describes the disruption itself as seasonal and temporary, a product of this year’s unusually clustered run of typhoons. But the firm also reports a separate argument coming from carriers: that structural shortages in port hinterland capacity could make part of the congestion permanent, regardless of when the storms stop. The typhoons may be the trigger, in other words, but not necessarily the whole explanation for why the backlog is proving so hard to clear.

Knock-on Effects

Capacity, equipment and schedules

Congestion at Shanghai and Ningbo doesn’t stay contained to those two ports. Carriers are actively managing the disruption by omitting Shanghai calls on some services and rolling cargo onto later sailings to protect their broader network schedules, which pushes the delay downstream to whichever sailing picks the cargo up next. Empty container availability has tightened as boxes sit longer in the congested yards, and some carriers have begun shifting Asia–Europe capacity back through the Suez Canal to relieve pressure on the network, a move that has its own flow-on effects for global vessel supply.

For importers, that combination of longer port dwell, tighter equipment, and carriers restructuring schedules mid-season is what turns a weather event into a planning problem.

Freight Rates

What it’s doing to pricing

The clearest sign that this congestion has moved from an operational headache to a pricing issue is what’s happening on intra-Asia lanes. The Drewry Intra-Asia Container Index rose for a fifth straight week in early September as typhoon disruption in China, combined with bottlenecks at transhipment hubs, tied up available vessel capacity across the region.

The disruption isn’t staying confined to Shanghai and Ningbo either. Delayed berthing in China has cascaded into major transhipment hubs including Busan, Hong Kong and Singapore, adding further delay for cargo connecting through those ports. Rising bunker fuel is layering on additional pressure: very-low-sulphur fuel oil prices in Singapore and Zhoushan have climbed roughly $30 per tonne over the past month, with high-sulphur fuel oil up around $50 per tonne. Drewry’s own view is that rates are likely to keep climbing in the coming weeks rather than level off, as long as the weather disruption and port congestion persist.

Q4 Planning

What this means for your Q4 shipments

If you’re moving cargo through Shanghai, Ningbo or connecting South China gateways over the next month, the practical guidance from across the industry is fairly consistent:

• Build in extra lead time. Current recommendations range from an additional 5–7 days for a single storm event up to 14 days for sailings departing through mid-September, given the compounding backlog.
• Bring forward time-critical Q4 bookings rather than waiting for congestion to ease, since recovery is taking longer than initial post-storm estimates suggested.
• Treat published carrier transit times as a starting point, not a guarantee. Ask for active vessel tracking rather than relying on the original schedule.
• Keep equipment and routing flexible, particularly if your cargo could be rolled onto an omitted or delayed sailing.

None of this means Q4 shipping out of China grinds to a halt, but it does mean the margin for error is smaller than usual, right as peak season demand is adding its own pressure to bookings.