The number of cruise ships arriving in the capital of Lanzarote does not stop increasing and is already doing so at double the rate it did last year.
In March, the Port of Arrecife, according to data from the Port Authority provided by the Arrecife City Council, received 35.8% more cruise passengers than the same month last year. Meanwhile, cruise ships increased by 15.4% in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, while they decreased by 12% in Puerto del Rosario.
During the month of March Arrecife received 31% of all cruise passengers from the ports of the Port Authority of Las Palmas.
In the computation of the first quarter of the year, Arrecife experienced a rise of 28.7% with respect to the same period of last 2025. Between January and March 2026 the state ports of the province of Las Palmas received 1,068,230 cruise passengers, of which Arrecife contributed 321,795. Thus Arrecife to 50 percent of all cruise passengers received in 2025.
The mayor Yonathan de León has highlighted that "turning Arrecife into a home port for shipping companies is yielding good results in tourist arrivals, many of them on high-end ships and with travelers of high purchasing power".
Furthermore, de León has highlighted that Arrecife, by being part of the state port network, and becoming, due to its strategic position in the Canary Islands (port closest to the European continent and North Africa) is the strategic city for the deployment in the Canary ports of the Entry/Exit System (EES) which came into operation last October 12, 2025.
EES is the automated IT system that allows the registration of nationals of non-EU countries travelling for a short stay, each time they cross the external borders of any of the European countries using the system.
Yonathan de León has recalled that, according to the periodic forecasts of the Port Authority, many of the cruise ships that call at Arrecife have their previous departure port in the areas of Casablanca, Gibraltar, or southern England, all of them in non-EU countries.
For their part, the councilor for Tourism and Commerce, Eli Merino, considers that the increase in cruises "is contributing to the increases in income, during their stops, of the commerce, hospitality, leisure, and transport sectors".
Merino highlighted the fact that "there are establishments that already open on holidays or Sundays, coinciding with cruise ship calls, something unthinkable until a few years ago".
