10 of the biggest container ships ever built, including the giant that jammed the Suez Canal for six days

Global trade runs on ships so large that a single vessel can carry tens of thousands of shipping containers stacked deck after deck, yet most of these giants pass through ports unnoticed by the public. One of them famously did the opposite, wedging itself sideways across the Suez Canal and halting a chunk of world shipping for nearly a week. Here are ten of the biggest container ships ever built.

1. MSC Irina: Current Record Holder

This ship leads a class that holds the outright record for container capacity, rated at 24,346 TEU and stretching close to 400 meters, according to a running largest container ships list.

A single TEU stands for one twenty-foot container, so a ship rated near 24,000 of them is effectively hauling the freight of several smaller cargo vessels combined, all coordinated through one hull, one crew, and one set of engines on each voyage across the world’s busiest and most congested shipping lanes.

2. CMA CGM Notre Dame: French-Flagged Giant

This LNG-powered ship leads a 24,212 TEU class and measures 399 meters long, according to coverage of its float-out at Yangzijiang Shipbuilding, and it carries 2,200 reefer plugs for refrigerated cargo.

Building a ship this size to run on liquefied natural gas rather than conventional bunker fuel reflects a broader push in container shipping toward lower-emission propulsion, even as the vessels themselves keep growing larger and heavier with each new class that shipyards deliver to major global carriers each year.

3. OOCL Spain: OOCL’s First Megaship

OOCL Spain, rated at 24,188 TEU, was named on February 17, 2023, as the first of six ships in its series, according to Marine Log’s report. Built by NACKS in Nantong, China, the vessel measures 399.99 meters long and 61.3 meters across the beam.

It entered OOCL’s Asia-Europe LL3 service in March 2023 on an 84-day round trip linking Shanghai with Valencia. The ship also carries three Smart Ship notations from the American Bureau of Shipping for onboard systems that track fuel use and structural health.

4. ONE Innovation: Record-Setting Cargo Run

This vessel set the record for the most cargo ever loaded aboard a single containership, carrying 22,233 TEU on a run from Singapore to Felixstowe, per a report on the record-breaking loading feat.

A load that size is a reminder that a ship’s stated capacity and its actual busiest voyage can differ, since real cargo mixes of empty, full, and oversized containers rarely fill a vessel to its theoretical maximum the way this one nearly did on that single celebrated voyage.

5. MSC Tessa: Eight-Ship MSC Class

Delivered in 2023, this ship leads an eight-vessel class rated at 24,116 TEU, placing it among the largest ships afloat according to the same largest container ships list.

MSC has built out one of the largest ultra-large fleets of any carrier in recent years, and classes like this one show how quickly the ceiling for maximum container capacity has kept rising even after earlier record holders once seemed enormous at the time they first entered commercial service on major trade lanes.

6. Ever Alot: Evergreen’s Biggest

One of five sister ships delivered in 2022, this 24,004 TEU vessel is Evergreen’s largest, as tracked on the same largest container ships list.

Evergreen is the same carrier behind the ship that famously blocked the Suez Canal, and this newer, far larger vessel shows how the company kept scaling up its fleet in the years after that widely covered incident drew global attention to the container shipping industry and its largest vessels as a whole, from Taiwan to Europe.

7. HMM Algeciras: South Korean Built

Built by Daewoo in South Korea and completed in April 2020, this ship carries 23,964 TEU and measures 399.9 meters long, according to its vessel profile.

HMM is a South Korean carrier that expanded its ultra-large fleet significantly around this period, and a ship nearly 400 meters long needs specially widened locks and deepened port channels just to call at many of the harbors it regularly serves along its busiest international trade routes across multiple continents, oceans, hemispheres, and time zones.

8. MSC Gülsün: First Of Its Class

This ship led a 23,756 TEU class that began deliveries in 2019, an early entrant among today’s largest vessels, per the largest container ships list.

Being an early ship in the modern race toward 24,000-TEU vessels means this class helped set the template that MSC and its rivals later built on, even as newer classes have since edged past its capacity by a few hundred boxes apiece in the years that followed its own delivery into regular commercial worldwide service.

9. CMA CGM Antoine de Saint Exupéry: France’s Biggest Flag Carrier

Measuring 400 meters long and 59 meters wide, this ship was billed at delivery as the world’s biggest containership flying the French flag, according to CMA CGM’s delivery announcement.

A ship’s flag state determines which country’s maritime rules and inspection regime it operates under, so a vessel this large flying France’s flag carried real symbolic weight for the country’s shipping industry at the time it entered commercial service on major international trade routes worldwide across several oceans, continents, and busy ports.

10. Ever Given: Blocked The Suez Canal

Rated at 20,124 TEU, this ship ran aground in the Suez Canal on March 23, 2021, and blocked traffic in both directions for just over six days, per its Wikipedia entry on the incident.

The grounding backed up a jam of more than two hundred vessels waiting to pass and became the most visible reminder yet of how a single stuck ship can ripple through global supply chains that depend on that narrow, heavily trafficked canal for east-west trade between continents.

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