The Panama Canal has announced temporary modifications to the locks' transit capacity, including adjustments to its daily auctions, in response to reduced precipitation in the canal watershed. The measures were set out in an Advisory to Shipping.

The waterway, which handles roughly five percent of global seaborne trade, depends on freshwater from Gatun Lake to fill its locks, with each transit releasing about 200 million liters of lake water that flows toward the sea. That dependence on rainfall is what ties watershed conditions directly to how many vessels, and how heavily loaded, the canal can accommodate.

Transit Slot Adjustments

Effective September 3, 2026, the number of daily slots available at the Neopanamax Locks will be adjusted to nine (9), while the daily slots available at the Panamax Locks will be twenty-five (25). As of September 15, 2026, the number of daily slots accessible at the Panamax Locks will be twenty-three (23). The new caps bring total daily capacity to 34 slots, falling to 32 from mid-September, below the roughly 36 daily transits the canal can handle under normal water conditions.

The decision comes despite the arrival of the rainy season in Panama and the water-saving measures implemented by the Panama Canal to mitigate the adverse effects of the El Niño event. According to the canal, current watershed conditions, including below-expected precipitation in the Canal watershed, require additional action to support the long-term sustainability of transit operations.

The move has a recent precedent: in 2023 and early 2024, drought driven by El Niño conditions cut the canal's daily transits from about 36 to as low as 22 and imposed draft restrictions, creating vessel backlogs that disrupted global shipping schedules before rainfall allowed capacity to be restored.

Revised Auction Structure

To promote a more equitable allocation process that better reflects market composition, including various cargo types and market segment characteristics, the Panama Canal will temporarily adjust the offer of its daily auction slots.

The change addresses a friction point that surfaced during the previous drought, when vessel categories of very different sizes and cargo values bid head-to-head for scarce slots and competition pushed the price of a single Neopanamax passage to a reported record of around $4 million in November 2023. The grouped format also reflects the traffic mix the canal has served since its 2016 expansion opened the Neopanamax Locks to larger ships, including LNG carriers that previously could not transit the waterway.

Beginning on September 3, 2026, the daily auction slot designated for Neopanamax, Supers and Regular vessels will be organized into four (4) groups:

• Group 1: LNG, LPG
• Group 2: Dry Bulk Carriers, General Cargo, Others
• Group 3: Container vessels, Vehicle Carriers / RoRo, Refrigerated
• Group 4: Chemical Tankers, Crude / Product Tankers

Allocation Rules

To promote a balanced allocation of booking slots across all users while maximizing water-use efficiency, customers that have already secured a booking slot for the same transit date through LoTSA, NetZero, or prior allocations will not be eligible to obtain an additional slot unless no other competitors exist.

Customer limits do not apply to slots awarded through the auction process. In the Neopanamax Locks, full container vessels with the highest TEU capacity will be given priority during the allocation process, with Customer Ranking used as the tiebreaker criterion. Additional details regarding these modifications are available in the Panama Canal's Advisory to Shipping.

Booking Reservations Urged

A reduction in the number of daily transits may increase waiting times for vessels arriving at the waterway without a secured reservation, the Panama Canal noted. To reduce the possibility of extended delays, the canal strongly urges customers to use the booking and reservation options available through the Transit Reservation (Booking) System. A confirmed reservation through this system is the only mechanism that guarantees a transit date.

To maintain safe and efficient canal operations, the Panama Canal Authority may, under Notice to Shipping N-07, temporarily suspend all, or part of, the Transit Reservation System when necessary. In such cases, if a reserved transit slot is canceled, the vessel will not be charged any penalty, surcharge, or cancellation fee.

Draft Restrictions Postponed

Based on the current level of water in Gatun Lake and the latest weather projections, the Panama Canal will postpone until September 2, 2026, the maximum authorized draft of 14.63 meters (48.0 feet) TFW in the Neopanamax Locks, which had been scheduled to become effective on August 26, 2026. The maximum authorized draft adjustment of 14.48 meters (47.5 feet) TFW, scheduled to become effective on September 3, 2026, will be postponed until October 1, 2026.

Draft limits matter beyond shipping economics: Gatun Lake and the surrounding watershed also supply drinking water to roughly half of Panama's population, a demand the canal must balance against transit operations when managing lake levels.

Continued Monitoring

The Panama Canal will continue to closely monitor weather conditions, watershed inflows, and lake levels, and should additional operational adjustments become necessary, the canal will provide customers with timely updates. Panama's rainy season normally extends from about May to December, meaning watershed inflows in the remaining wet-season weeks will be central to those assessments.

Because weather conditions are changing more rapidly than originally anticipated, the Panama Canal will make every reasonable effort to announce any future adjustments as far in advance as possible. However, the timing of such announcements will depend on evolving conditions and the availability of updated information.

Source: The Panama Canal