If you’ve sailed Norwegian Sky, Norwegian Sun or Oceania’s Regatta, you may want to check the calendar. All three are leaving their cruise lines within the next two years, and this week their owner confirmed two more are going with them.
Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings — the company behind Norwegian Cruise Line, Oceania Cruises and the luxury Regent Seven Seas — told investors that five ships will leave its fleet by 2028.
| Ship | Age | What happens to her | Last season |
|---|---|---|---|
| Oceania Regatta | 28 | Long-term charter to an Australian travel company | 2026 |
| Norwegian Sky | 27 | Long-term charter to India’s Cordelia Cruises | 2026 |
| Norwegian Sun | 25 | Long-term charter to Cordelia Cruises | 2027 |
| Seven Seas Navigator | 27 | Sold to a residential line — cabins become permanent homes | 2027 |
| Oceania Sirena | 27 | Sold — buyer not named | Spring 2028 |
Three of them aren’t being sold at all
Norwegian Sky, Norwegian Sun and Oceania Regatta are going out on long-term charter, which is closer to leasing than selling: another company operates the ship, repaints it in its own colours and runs its own cruises, while ownership stays put.
For passengers the effect is the same — the ship stops sailing for the line you booked it with, and starts sailing for somebody else, usually somewhere further away.
The other two are proper sales. Seven Seas Navigator goes to Avora Residences, and Sirena to a buyer who hasn’t been identified.
You can still sail all five — and two of them cheaply
This is the practical bit. Every one of these ships is still carrying passengers, and several are doing it at low prices.
Norwegian Sky and Norwegian Sun are on farewell seasons in and around Europe right now, and both are among the ships Norwegian is discounting hard this summer — the Sky’s British Isles sailings and the Sun’s Baltic runs are the last chances to sail either under a Norwegian flag.
The Sky hands over this October. The Sun sails for Norwegian until September 2027. Sirena keeps sailing for Oceania right through to spring 2028, so anything booked before then goes ahead as normal.
India, Australia, and a ship where the cabins are homes
Two are off to India. Cordelia Cruises is India’s only home-grown deep-sea cruise line, and it’s putting the Sky on weekly runs between Chennai and Singapore from summer 2027 — a genuinely bookable holiday if you already fly that way.
Regatta goes to an Australian travel company, which will run her under its own brand.
Seven Seas Navigator is being bought by one of the companies turning cruise ships into permanent addresses. The ship keeps cruising — she just stops selling holidays.
Instead you buy your cabin outright and live aboard as she circles the world, and we’ve looked at what that actually costs.
That last one is the change worth noticing. Older ships used to move down the chain to smaller cruise lines. Now they’re competing with buyers who don’t want to run cruises at all — which is partly why Britain’s Ambassador has struggled to find its promised fourth ship.
Nobody has said who bought Sirena. The trade press’s best guess is Azamara, which already runs four near-identical sisters built at the same yard.
Sixteen ships are coming. Most aren’t coming here
Sixteen new ships are on order across the three lines — seven for Norwegian, five for Oceania and four for Regent.
In practice, the newest ships are bigger and mostly bound for Florida rather than Europe, and the pace slows sharply — one delivery a year from 2028, against two a year now.
So the fleet you’ll find sailing from European ports gets newer slowly, and smaller ships become rarer. If you like a ship you can walk end to end in ten minutes, the supply is shrinking.
The bottom line
Five ships, all between 25 and 28 years old, all gone within three years — and the small, characterful ones always go first.
If any of them carry a memory for you, the farewell seasons are cheap and they’re happening now. If you’ve got a booking, nothing changes: every one of these ships sails its published programme before it goes.
