2027 Celestyal Cruises: New Thessaloniki & Volos Stops

Celestyal's Chief Operating Officer, Captain George Koumpenas (right), speaking on a panel at the 9th Infrastructure & Transport Conference (ITC 2026) in Athens.

Celestyal has just announced one of its most interesting moves for the seasons ahead: the Greek line will bring its ships to Thessaloniki and Volos in 2027, adding the two ports to its Eastern Mediterranean winter programme within a much wider overhaul of how the fleet is positioned across the Mediterranean.

The two Greek ports will appear on the brand-new seven-night Mediterranean Mosaic: Turkey & Greece itinerary, sailed by Celestyal Journey between Istanbul and Athens, with further calls at Kuşadası and Heraklion. For anyone who plans Greek travel around food first, this route is a gift: an itinerary that stitches proper city-break stops to island calls turns an ordinary winter sailing into a rolling culinary journey through Greece. Thessaloniki's historic core and celebrated food scene, plus Volos's harbourside tavernas, make the pairing feel like two city-breaks inside one cruise — exactly what makes it interesting for planners and dreamers alike.

Further west, new itineraries planned for the same year will link Athens with the Western Mediterranean and destinations as distant as Lisbon — a sign that the programme's reach will no longer stop where most Greek cruise maps do.

These additions build on the adjustments Celestyal already made to its Greek programme in 2026. That year saw Agios Nikolaos added as a weekly call, Rhodes return to the seven-night itineraries, and the Ionian stay on the map through calls at Corfu and Katakolo — ports that hand passengers the same blend of harbours, coves and coastline that keeps every roundup of enchanting hidden beaches in Greece popular each summer.

The plans were laid out by Celestyal's Chief Operating Officer, Captain George Koumpenas, during the 9th Infrastructure & Transport Conference (ITC 2026) in Athens.

The numbers behind the programme look healthy. In 2025, Celestyal carried about 125,000 passengers, translating into roughly 650,000 passenger visits. Geopolitical developments in the Arabian Gulf did disrupt the company's operational planning, yet activity in 2026 is tracking in much the same territory.

It is those same developments that have pushed the company to reshape its deployment with a sharper focus on the Mediterranean. For 2027, Celestyal intends to grow on both sides of that sea — Eastern and Western alike.

Speaking at the conference, Koumpenas was quick to point out that demand alone will not keep the Greek cruise sector growing. The sector's momentum is strong, he acknowledged; for it to be sustained over the longer term, though, the industry needs rules that are stable and predictable, planning that stretches over the long term and, above all, the right port infrastructure.

At its core, the request was one of predictability. Cruise lines plan itineraries and capacity several years in advance, so whatever is decided today — in regulatory chambers, port authorities and ministries — ends up shaping the ships and routes that will actually sail in 2027 and beyond.

The backdrop, he added, is an increasingly demanding environment for operators: higher fuel and operating costs, compounded by the requirements of the EU ETS and FuelEU Maritime, Greece's cruise passenger fee and a series of other port charges. Taken together, they make deployment and cost decisions harder with every season.

That is why he stressed that predictable policy and operating conditions matter so much: they are precisely what cruise lines weigh when deciding where to invest, which itineraries to put on sale and how much capacity to commit to each destination.

Infrastructure was the second big theme of his remarks. A significant share of Greek cruise activity, he noted, still depends on ships anchoring offshore and tendering passengers ashore, while some destinations lack the facilities modern cruise vessels need. His argument was simple: money collected from cruise passengers — the cruise passenger fee — should visibly flow back into the port infrastructure and services those passengers actually use.

His other suggestion was for clear, long-term master plans for the ports, documents that would give ports a solid basis for their own investment and offer cruise operators far better visibility over what each destination will be capable of in the future.

Celestyal Journey will operate the seven-night Mediterranean Mosaic itinerary featuring Thessaloniki and Volos in 2027.

There is a distinctly local story behind the hardware, too. Celestyal keeps its global headquarters in Greece and carries out part of its ship repair and refurbishment work at Greek shipyards. The company points to the 22-million-euro upgrade of Celestyal Discovery as its showcase example — a modernisation project, a significant part of which was undertaken in Greece, with Greek companies, technicians and suppliers.

The Greek footprint continues in the ship's stores: onboard procurement encompasses more than 80,000 stock-keeping units (SKUs) of Greek products — the individual inventory references used to identify and keep track of every item on board.

Looking ahead, Koumpenas said that overall cruise volumes could see a modest adjustment in 2027, as higher costs and continuing geopolitical uncertainty do their work on the market.

None of that, though, seems to shake the company's anchor. For Celestyal, Greece was never just another destination on the map, he said — it is the line's home, part of its identity and its DNA. True to that idea, the company says it has consistently invested in its ships, its partnerships, its destinations and the local communities that host them.