Cargo traffic at the Port de Barcelona maintained its upward trend in September, totaling 52.8 million tons in the first nine months of the year, 1% more than in the same period of 2025. This was thanks to the growth of traffic such as full import containers and automobiles.
Thus, full import containers increased by 7.1% and, together with the good performance of full transit containers, placed total container traffic at 2.82 million TEUs. This figure was reached thanks to the arrival of goods from the main origin markets for imports arriving at the Port de Barcelona. Thus, containers from China increased by 15.1% and those from Vietnam by 12.6%. Exports, on the other hand, fell by 7.2%, dragged down by the decline in markets such as, once again, China and the United States.
Vehicle traffic increased by 2.7%, to 541,565 units, driven by the strong increase in imports (+18.6%), which added 25,600 more vehicles to those already arrived in the same period last year, totaling 163,289 units, of which 60% are electric or hybrid.
Bulk liquids also increased their traffic volume, rising by 2.2% between January and September to a total of 12.5 million tons. The increase is due to the growth in chemical products traffic (+51.1%) and biofuels (+39.9%). Bulk solids, meanwhile, suffered a decrease of 2.9%, to 2.9 million tons. While potash increased by 18.9%, traffic of cereals and common salt fell by 35% and 15.2%, respectively.
Regarding the ro-ro traffic segment, UTIs (Intermodal Transport Units) also increased by 2.9%, to 339,402 units, thanks to the notable increase in traffic with Italy (+8.5%).
Finally, in the first nine months of the year, 4.8 million passenger movements occurred at the Port de Barcelona, 4.5% more than the previous year. Of these, 1,518,655 correspond to ferry passengers. In the cruise section, 1.89 million passengers visited the city of Barcelona*.
*The statistics of the Port de Barcelona reflect the number of movements made by cruise ships, following the international standard port accounting. However, these data do not reflect the real number of cruise passengers arriving in the city. For this reason, work has been done with Turisme de Barcelona to implement a new calculation system that allows homogenizing the cruise passenger data offered by the Port with those provided by the city.
