Italy: A Shipping Overview

Operating Under Stress: 2026 Legal and Market Trends for Shipping, Ports, and Logistics.

The new normal of geopolitical risk, security-driven trade and realistic decarbonisation

After a turbulent 2025, the opening weeks of 2026 have crystallised a new baseline for the maritime-port ecosystem: what many market players treated as contingent “black swans” is hardening into a durable operating environment marked by persistent geopolitical tension, diffuse conflict risk, and selective shortening (or re-routing) of value chains. In practical terms, this is not merely a volatility story. It is a structural story about how global trade corridors are priced, secured, insured, financed and regulated and how contractual and compliance architecture is increasingly being re-written to function under conditions of chronic uncertainty.

Four dynamics are particularly relevant for clients active across shipping, ports and terminals, energy logistics, and the broader maritime supply chain. Together, they shape the “new normal” that will define commercial decision-making and legal services in 2026, and likely beyond.

Red Sea routes

First, there are signals of partial normalisation in the Red Sea theatre, with major carriers testing a return to the shorter Red Sea–Suez route. Yet any “return to business as usual” remains tentative and reversible. Even where de-escalation dynamics appear to be taking hold, the residual threat environment – and the credibility of commitments by armed non-state actors – continues to impose a risk premium on routing choices, insurance, and schedule reliability. At the same time, renewed threats, including the risk of instability involving Iran, could pause or slow a broader return, underscoring how quickly the operating picture can shift again.

Impact of the United States

Second, the past months have marked a notable shift in the US posture from primarily sanctions-driven pressure campaigns – often targeting the maritime sector as an enforcement surface – to more open, unilateral military action in at least one major instance, with consequential spillovers for maritime risk forecasting. In the wake of the US military operation in Venezuela, US maritime enforcement actions have included seizures of vessels linked to Venezuelan oil trading, illustrating how sanctions and interdiction practices are increasingly applied through “hard power” patterns. Separately, the Iran theatre illustrates a deeper predictability challenge: even when military action is not a foregone conclusion, the combination of high-stakes signalling, naval deployments, and potential retaliatory dynamics can reprice risk across entire basins. This matters for maritime actors not only because of the energy dimension, but because the risk calculus is increasingly shaped by abrupt, unilateral decisions that compress reaction time – especially around chokepoints and the wider Middle East maritime arc.

The core point is the reduced predictability of the form risk takes. Traditional scenario planning – built around escalation ladders, gradual policy shifts, or stable multilateral coordination – fits poorly with an environment in which unilateral military action and accelerated maritime enforcement can materialise quickly, with immediate contractual and operational consequences.

Maritime domain’s strategic importance

Third, the maritime domain is no longer treated as a neutral conduit for trade and energy; it is increasingly treated as a strategic arena in which infrastructure and access are leveraged, contested, and protected. This dynamic accelerated after the Russia-Ukraine war, with heightened attention to subsea infrastructure vulnerabilities, sabotage risk, and the legal grey zones around attribution and response. What is new in 2026 is the widening of “critical infrastructure” from a relatively bounded energy/security notion into a more expansive category that includes:

• port and harbour infrastructure;
• the digital systems that operate them; and
• the maritime energy flows that sustain industrial resilience.

Green initiatives and climate agenda

Fourth, the market is reassessing the trajectory of “voluntary” decarbonisation. The postponement of the International Maritime Organisation Net-Zero Framework discussions has increased uncertainty around global alignment and it is changing how shipping companies and other maritime actors price the expected pace of mandatory global measures. The practical effect is that incremental and efficiency-based solutions – those that can be deployed now – gain relative weight in investment and operational strategy, while some “hard” commitments and long-horizon narratives lose urgency.

The same “return to realism” is visible in the fuel market. Multiple indicators suggest a meaningful cooling of earlier enthusiasm for green hydrogen: major industrial players have warned of a more challenging market and delayed investment decisions. Analysts increasingly describe hydrogen as stuck in pilot phases, with cancellations and cost headwinds. At the same time, maritime decarbonization strategies are increasingly being built around what is financeable, certifiable, and available at scale in the near term. LNG pathways, advanced biofuels and renewable derivatives that can be integrated into existing infrastructure with manageable execution risk are becoming major choices.

In this broader context of a more “realistic” transition, Europe risks lagging in its ability to adapt its ambitious climate agenda to a more pragmatic approach. This tension is visible in the shipping sector as well, where the upcoming revision of the ETS Directive may become a marker of a broader shift in paradigm.

2026 client impact: defensive transition, ESG simplification and financing

In legal terms, these dynamics converge into a single thesis: the sector is “playing defence”. Decisions are increasingly driven by risk management, immediate solution availability, and the ability to operate within – and, at times, between – regulatory regimes without losing competitiveness. In this respect, two trends are particularly telling. First, the progressive migration of investment from European transhipment hubs to North African transhipment ports, driven by the application of the EU ETS to maritime transport. Second, the growing sophistication of charterparty clauses designed to allocate responsibilities under FuelEU Maritime or, where pooling is contemplated, the inclusion of a vessel’s energy-efficiency profile as part of its asset value. This would be increasingly relevant in secondary-market transactions, especially vessels sold mid-way through a FuelEU reporting cycle after having used sustainable fuels that generate and carry forward compliance “credits”.

Looking ahead, the sector’s defensive posture is likely to translate into a more “solutions-oriented” legal market, where value is created by making operations executable under stress rather than by abstract compliance. In short, legal services will increasingly sit at the intersection of commercial continuity, enforcement exposure, and infrastructure security policies, such as the upcoming European military mobility framework.

Among the legislative and regulatory developments most likely to affect clients in 2026, a central place should be reserved for the EU’s ongoing “simplification” agenda on ESG reporting and corporate due diligence, both in relation to:

• the recalibration of:
  • the Corporate Sustainability Reporting Directive (Directive (EU) 2022/2464); and
  • the Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence Directive (Directive (EU) 2024/1760); as well as
• the announced simplification of the EU Taxonomy framework, including the technical screening criteria under Regulation (EU) 2020/852 and the related delegated acts.

From a client perspective, these workstreams are not “compliance hygiene”. They have direct consequences for:

• access to private credit and underwriting conditions, particularly for capital-intensive assets and fleet renewal plans; and
• eligibility and structuring of public support for newbuilds and transition investments.

The financing implications are particularly relevant because of the structural rebalancing of ship finance away from Europe. As a matter of fact, European banks accounted for 72% of global ship finance in December 2013, but Europe’s share has since fallen to below 50% in recent years. Against that backdrop, the legal implications remain material on two fronts: first, updated due diligence duties can reshape liability exposure across multi-tier supply chains; and second, taxonomy-driven screening and disclosure influences access to credit, the structuring of covenants, and the drafting of financing documentation for maritime and port clients operating within complex value chains.