63 Slots, New Priorities: How Panama Canal Booking Changes Affect Container Ships

The Panama Canal Authority issued two booking advisories in four days. A-30-2026 on August 25 and A-31-2026 on August 28. Read together, they change what a full container vessel can expect from the Neopanamax booking system for booking dates beginning September 13.

Weekly Neopanamax capacity does not move. A-31 offers 63 slots per week, which is the same nine a day that A-29-2026 set for booking dates beginning September 4. The advisory says its own distribution table complements A-29 rather than replacing it. What changed is who is allowed to hold those slots, and where each segment stands when one becomes available.

Two restrictions come off for Neopanamax vessels

A-28-2026 had barred a customer from taking a second slot for the same booking date, and from taking a slot on the booking date following one it had already won. Both rules covered slots obtained through LoTSA and NetZero.

A-31 disapplies both to Neopanamax vessels. From August 30, for booking dates beginning September 13, a Neopanamax customer may hold more than one slot on the same booking date and may hold slots across two or more consecutive booking dates.

The relief is written for Neopanamax only. Panamax Supers and Regulars stay under the A-28 rule as it now reads.

Every segment now has a stated minimum

A-31 sets floors by market segment inside the weekly total. Two of them are per booking date and two are per week.

Segment	Minimum allocation	Distributed by
Full Container	5 slots per booking date	Vessel TTA capacity
LPG	3 slots per booking date	Customer ranking
LNG	3 slots per week	Customer ranking
Vehicle Carriers/RoRo, Bulkers, Other	3 slots per week	Customer ranking

Neopanamax segment minimums for booking dates beginning September 13, 2026. Source: Panama Canal Authority Advisory to Shipping A-31-2026.

Full Container’s minimum of five per date and LPG’s three per date account for 56 slots a week. LNG and the Vehicle Carriers/RoRo, Bulkers and Other group each receive a minimum of three per week, taking the stated minimums to 62. A-31’s weekly distribution table assigns the remaining slot to Full Container, bringing that segment to 36 slots per week and the total to 63.

Within the Full Container minimum, slots are distributed across three TTA capacity ranges set out in a table in the advisory. LoTSA allocations reduce the slots available in range order from 1 to 3. Where ranges 1 or 2 underfill, the remaining slots move to the immediately higher range. If range 3 has no eligible vessel, its slot moves back to range 2 and then range 1.

Three days earlier, containerships lost first claim on cancelled slots

A-30-2026, dated August 25 and effective immediately, rewrote a line in Notice to Shipping N-07 governing Booking Period 1A for Neopanamax vessels. The old text gave priority to full container vessels when assigning slots carried over from Period 1 and slots that were cancelled or otherwise became available.

Those slots now go through a Special Competition allocated on customer ranking in a fixed order: LNG, then LPG, then Car Carrier/RoRo, then Full Containers. Full container vessels moved from the front of that queue to the back of it.

A-31 uses the same ordering when a segment underfills. If competition leaves Full Container slots unallocated, they are offered to LNG, LPG, Vehicle Carriers/RoRo, Bulkers or Others in that sequence. Anything still unassigned after competition goes first come, first served for the rest of the booking period.

The practical result for a container operator is a stronger guaranteed baseline and a weaker recovery position. Five slots a day are reserved for the segment. A slot that is cancelled or carried over is now offered to three other segments before it comes back to containers, and the auction remains the expensive alternative.

That raises the cost of finding out late. If a booked Panama transit on one of your October strings slips and you learn about it from the discharge terminal rather than from the schedule, walk through how ops teams set exception alerts across carriers in one view.

One figure in the trade coverage does not match the advisory

Several reports of the August 28 announcement describe the LNG minimum as three slots per booking date. The Canal’s own press release is less precise, stating only that LNG vessels receive three slots. A-31 itself states three slots per week for LNG.

The arithmetic confirms the weekly reading. Five per date for Full Container, three per date for LPG and three per date for LNG would commit 77 slots a week against 63 available. A-31’s stated segment minimums instead total 62, while its weekly distribution table allocates all 63: 36 to Full Container, 21 to LPG, three to LNG and three to Vehicle Carriers/RoRo, Bulkers and Other. Work from the advisory text rather than the summaries.

One drafting point is worth raising with your agent. A-30 broadened the A-28 language on repeat slots to cover first come, first served allocations and both the previous and following booking dates. A-31 then disapplies A-28 to Neopanamax vessels while quoting the original A-28 wording rather than A-30’s replacement. Confirm which version your bookings are being assessed against.

What these two advisories do not change

Last Minute service. A-30 rewrote the eligibility wording in N-07, replacing the reference to vessels that tried to obtain a slot in any booking period with vessels that participated in a Tiebreaker or Special Competition and in an auction. Neither advisory lifts the suspension A-28 imposed.

Swap and substitution limits. Once a slot is assigned, the replacement vessel must carry the same or greater TTA capacity, and customer preferences submitted during allocation carry the same restriction. Alliance and vessel-sharing members may participate provided no customer exceeds its slot maximum.

NetZero swaps are stricter. A-30 limits NetZero swaps to vessels meeting the same eligibility criteria as the original allocation, including identical PCUMS tonnage. Substitutions allow PCUMS tonnage equal to or greater than the original vessel.

Auction slots. The per-customer limit still does not apply to auction slots, and the daily auction slot is drawn from whatever remains across the segment competitions when Booking Period 3 opens.

The dates to work against

August 30: A-31 takes effect.
September 13: first booking dates governed by the new Neopanamax rules and segment minimums.
September 15: total daily booking slots fall to 32 under A-29, with the reduction landing on the Panamax Super allocation.
October 1: Neopanamax maximum authorised draft drops to 14.48 metres (47.5 feet) TFW, postponed from September 3.

ACP describes A-31 as temporary and continues to tie its booking settings to watershed conditions. Two questions are worth putting to carriers before October volumes commit. Whether the Panama-routed strings in your October schedules hold confirmed transit bookings under the new allocation, and what the fallback rotation is if a slot is cancelled and clears the Special Competition to another segment.

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