War-Diverted Traffic Is Reshaping NEOM’s Port. What Happens If Hormuz Reopens?

At a Glance

• RoRo vessel calls at the Port of NEOM have climbed from a pre-war average of 17 per month to 30 in September 2026, almost all on the Safaga shuttle route, approximately 70% above the pre-war baseline.
• Bulk carrier calls rose from 1 in October–April to 25 between May and September, with ships of mostly 52,000-82,000 DWT frequently staying for weeks.
• Container calls have decreased. 7 in five months before the war, only two between March and July, and none since mid-July.
• Saudi-flagged port-service vessels went dark over a four-day window in late July 2026, with pilot boats and tugs ceasing AIS transmission between 20 and 23 July.
• Netherlands- and France-flagged construction and dredging vessels departed after Boskalis completed the port’s channel works in early March 2026, with monthly calls falling from a peak of 69 in November 2025 to under 10 across every month since.

A Port Not Behaving Like the Megacity It Was Built For

By any reasonable metric, 2026 should have been a difficult year for the Port of NEOM. The megacity it was built to serve has been through a visible contraction. The Public Investment Fund wrote down the giga-projects by $8 billion at the end of 2024 and ordered spending cuts of more than 20%. The Line was paused in September 2025 and later deprioritized beyond 2030. In early October 2026, the $2.5 billion NEOM Stadium planned for the 2034 World Cup was shelved. Each cancellation reduces the construction demand that was supposed to drive the port’s traffic.

Yet the port’s traffic is up. Not slightly up, but significantly, and across the vessel categories you would least expect given the megacity’s contraction.

The explanation is not NEOM itself. The explanation is the war.

What the War Did to Red Sea and Gulf Shipping

On 28 February 2026, the conflict in the Red Sea and Gulf escalated into direct targeting of commercial shipping across the broader Saudi coast. Houthi declarations that Saudi shipping was a legitimate target followed, with the explicit 20 July 2026 declaration announcing a campaign against Saudi-affiliated vessels.

The response from commercial shipping was predictable. Routes diverted. Saudi Arabia’s Gulf-coast ports, including Dammam and Jubail, were cut off from normal routes, and cargo shifted west to the Red Sea. Saudi Red Sea exports increased from 29.6M tons to 54.8M tons year on year in April–May, while Gulf cargo fell by 41.2M tons. Vessels that could not viably reach their original destinations needed alternative discharge points. 

The Port of NEOM, geographically positioned at the northern end of the Red Sea near the mouth of the Gulf of Aqaba, became one of those alternatives.

The Three Shifts in NEOM’s Traffic Profile

What Windward’s data shows is not a single category of displaced traffic, but three distinct shifts, each with a different operational signature.

RoRo Calls Climbed 70% Above Pre-War Baseline

Monthly RoRo vessel calls at the Port of NEOM averaged 17 before the war. In September 2026, they reached 30. Almost all of the increase runs on the Safaga shuttle route, connecting NEOM with Safaga across the Red Sea on the Egyptian coast. The increase likely reflects the corridor NEOM launched with Pan Marine and DFDS in April 2026, which pairs the Safaga ferry with trucking onwards to Gulf markets, giving cargo a route that avoids both Hormuz and Bab el-Mandeb.

Bulk Carrier Calls Went From 1 to 25

The pre-war bulk carrier picture at NEOM was nearly non-existent. Between October 2025 and April 2026, the Port of NEOM recorded a single bulk carrier call. Between May and September 2026, it recorded 25, peaking at 9 in September. The vessels calling NEOM are mostly in the 52,000–82,000 DWT range — handysize to Kamsarmax bulkers, most of the supramax and ultramax size, moving dry commodities — and many are staying for weeks.

The extended port stays matter. Most of these ships arrive from the Black Sea, Turkey, and Asia, then leave for Indian ports, suggesting they are likely discharging cargo at NEOM that would have otherwise gone to Saudi Arabia’s Gulf ports. These multi-week stays indicate a slow discharge, so a vessel that lingers for weeks after arrival is not using NEOM as a destination of choice — it is using NEOM as a safer location to hold cargo while route decisions are worked out further downstream.

Container Calls Disappeared

In the five months before the war began, the Port of NEOM recorded seven container calls, mostly regional feeders linking it with Aqaba, King Abdullah, and Jeddah. Between March and July 2026, only two container calls were recorded. Since mid-July 2026, container calls have been zero.

Until NEOM’s new container terminal opens, container cargo diverting across Saudi Arabia will likely flow via Jeddah and King Abdullah, where MSC launched a land-bridge service in May. This will likely shift after NEOM’s terminal opens by the end of 2026 and ramps up through 2027.

The Service Fleet Tells Its Own Story

Two secondary data signatures from the Windward dataset add important context to the main picture.

The first is the Saudi-flagged port-service vessel pattern. Through late 2025 and into mid-2026, Saudi pilot boats and tugs operating in the NEOM port area logged between 42 and 155 calls a month, averaging about 80, before this traffic went dark between 20 and 23 July. Following this period, August and September 2026 showed zero Saudi-flagged service-vessel calls. The four-day cessation window is consistent with a deliberate operational decision to stop AIS broadcasting rather than a gradual decline, likely in response to the escalating targeting environment.

The second is the departure of the Netherlands-flagged construction and dredging fleet. These service vessels peaked at 69 calls in November 2025 and held at 42–44 a month through February 2026. In March, as Boskalis completed its channeling contract, calls dropped to 4, and they have stayed under 10 a month since.

Together, these two signatures tell a specific story. The port’s main channel works concluded in early March 2026. The Saudi port-service vessels that support commercial operations stopped broadcasting their positions as the security environment deteriorated, while the ships they supported kept calling. Moving through infrastructure that was built out just before the construction fleet departed and the pilot boats stopped transmitting, war-diverted commercial traffic is contributing to the port’s recent growth

Two Scenarios for What Comes Next

Much of the recent growth at the Port of NEOM depends almost entirely on the war continuing to disrupt alternative Red Sea and Gulf shipping routes. When that disruption ends, the port’s traffic will respond. Two scenarios appear operationally plausible from the current data.

If Hormuz Transits Recover

If Gulf shipping routes widen and Hormuz transits approach anything near pre-war levels, bulk calls at the Port of NEOM are likely to fall first. The vessels discharging diverted cargo at NEOM will have less commercial reason to continue doing so once their intended discharge ports become accessible. RoRo traffic would likely settle back toward its pre-war baseline of approximately 17 calls per month rather than disappearing entirely, since the Safaga shuttle has an underlying trade logic independent of the war.

Under this scenario, the port’s current September traffic profile is a wartime peak that will decline rather than a new baseline.

If Transits Remain Low

If the current security environment persists through the end of 2026 and into 2027, bulk calls are likely to continue climbing past September’s figure of 9. Container carriers may begin testing calls as the port’s new Terminal 1 ramps up through 2027 after its expected opening by the end of 2026, particularly if the operational calculus of calling at the Port of NEOM becomes favorable relative to the risk environment at other Red Sea or Gulf ports.

Under this scenario, the war-diverted traffic becomes the port’s actual customer base, and the port’s commercial identity will see an eventual shift from “logistical convenience” to “security-essential corridor”.

What This Means for Red Sea Shipping Intelligence

The Port of NEOM story is a reminder that major port traffic can shift substantially in months, not years, when the regional security environment changes. The September 2026 picture at NEOM does not look like the port’s projected plan described a year ago, and the next twelve months are likely to look different again.

For analysts tracking Red Sea and Gulf shipping, the Port of NEOM is now a leading indicator of regional route decisions. When bulk calls at NEOM fall, it signals confidence returning to Gulf transits. When they rise, it signals the opposite. When container carriers finally test calls, it signals that at least one segment of global shipping has made its risk assessment of the current environment and found the port workable.

What makes any of this visible is the ability to track port-call activity, vessel classes, flag populations, and length-of-stay patterns at polygon-level resolution over time. The service-vessel going-dark pattern, the construction-fleet departure signature, and the three traffic categories moving in different directions are observable only through continuous, multi-source monitoring at the port level.

Analysis by Zane Amundsen, Windward MIOC Middle East Desk Lead. Reviewed by Matthew Mueller, Windward MIOC U.S. Team Lead