The Cape of Good Hope Route

For most of the past three years, the fastest way to get a container from Shanghai to Rotterdam was the slow way. When attacks on Red Sea shipping began in late 2023, the big container lines abandoned the Suez Canal and sent their fleets around the southern tip of Africa, the route Portuguese navigators opened five centuries ago. It adds roughly 6,000 kilometers and 10 to 14 days to an Asia–Europe voyage, burns far more fuel, and by BIMCO's estimate raised world demand for container ships by about 10 percent. The 2026 Iran war sent still more ships this way. By October 2026 the lines were finally heading back to Suez, but the Cape had proved again that it is the world's great fallback.

The route leaves East Asia through the Strait of Malacca or the Indonesian straits, crosses the Indian Ocean, and swings around the Cape of Good Hope, often well offshore, before running north along West Africa past the Canary Islands to the Strait of Gibraltar or the English Channel. Shanghai to Rotterdam is about 13,800 nautical miles (some 25,600 kilometers) this way, against about 10,600 via Suez. Despite its fame, the Cape of Good Hope is not Africa's southern tip. Cape Agulhas, about 150 kilometers to the southeast, is, and the waters off both capes are notorious for winter gales and the steep waves of the Agulhas Current. Cape Town, Port Louis in Mauritius, and other ports along the way sell fuel, supplies, and crew changes to passing ships.

Bartolomeu Dias rounded the cape in 1488 and called it the Cape of Storms. King John II of Portugal renamed it Good Hope for the sea road to India it promised, and Vasco da Gama followed that road to Calicut in 1498. The Dutch founded Cape Town in 1652 to supply passing ships. Suez drained much of its traffic after 1869, but the canal's 1967–75 closure and supertankers too deep for Suez kept the Cape busy. Since December 2023 it has carried most Asia–Europe container traffic. The Cape Chamber of Commerce reported a 112 percent surge in passing vessels in early March 2026 as the Iran war spread. By early October 2026 BIMCO estimated that 36 percent of container capacity choosing between the two routes was back on Suez, and Linerlytica expected a full return by early 2027.

• The Asia–Europe Route via Suez
  The main artery between Asian factories and European ports, through Malacca, the Red Sea, and the Suez Canal alternative to
• The Suez Canal
  Egypt's sea-level shortcut between the Mediterranean and the Red Sea, still recovering from the Red Sea crisis alternative to
• The Bab-el-Mandeb
  The Gate of Grief between Yemen and the Horn of Africa, southern door of the Red Sea and the Suez route bypasses
• Atlantic Ocean
  The world's second-largest ocean and great highway of history crosses
• Indian Ocean
  The world's third-largest and warmest ocean crosses
• The Strait of Hormuz
  The narrow outlet of the Persian Gulf, through which about a fifth of the world's oil passed in 2025 diversions linked to the 2026 closure of
• The Spice Route
  The sea trade in pepper, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon that drew Europe into Asia and remade the world map opened a sea road for
• The Mozambique Channel
  The broad arm of the Indian Ocean between Mozambique and Madagascar on the shipping lanes around the Cape of Good Hope passes through
• Cape Town
  South Africa's legislative capital, beneath Table Mountain port of call
• South Africa
  The rainbow nation at the continent's southern tip rounds the tip of