The sixth and last ship of Norwegian Cruise Line’s Prima class has a name. She is Norwegian Bella, and she will start her working life in Europe.
NCL ordered the ship from Fincantieri in July 2018 as part of a six-ship programme. Five of her sisters have been named and four are in service, but until this morning the 2028 ship was simply “unnamed” in NCL’s own fleet lists.
The name is not a surprise to anyone who reads trademark filings. NCL registered Prima, Viva, Aqua, Luna, Bella, Ombra, Vela and Ultima as a batch in 2022, and the trade press had Ultima, the Italian for “last”, down as the obvious choice for the final ship. NCL went with “beautiful” instead.
Marc Kazlauskas, president of Norwegian Cruise Line, said Bella “marks a milestone moment in our fleet” as the culmination of the class.
Why Europe is the bigger surprise
Bella and her sister Norwegian Aura are the two largest ships NCL has built, at 170,000 gross tons and a little over 3,900 guests. Aura, due next May, sails a handful of maiden voyages between Trieste and Athens and then crosses to Miami.
Bella stays. Her whole inaugural season, from May 2028, is in the Mediterranean, based at Barcelona. Bookings opened today.
That reverses the pattern NCL set for 2028. Its Southampton season puts Star, Jewel and Getaway on the Solent, ships of 27, 23 and 14 years, while every Prima-class ship bar Viva was bound for the Americas. Bella makes the newest ship in the fleet a two-hour flight away.
Where she sails
Bar the maiden voyage, every sailing in the inaugural season is a seven-night loop from Barcelona, boarding at 6pm and back at 7am a week later.
NCL is running four versions of it. All four call at Civitavecchia for Rome and Livorno for Florence and Pisa, and all four have exactly one sea day.
What varies is the rest. Two add La Spezia for the Cinque Terre, three include Salerno for the Amalfi coast, three call at Palma, and every version stops at Marseille.
The calls are long by Mediterranean standards. Livorno runs until 9pm on three of the four, Civitavecchia is a 12-hour day throughout, and Salerno gets 11 hours.
What it costs a British cruiser
Her first voyage is the one worth knowing about. Before the Barcelona loops begin, Bella sails a five-night positioning cruise from Valletta, calling at Salerno and Civitavecchia on the way to Barcelona.
Passengers board in Malta at 6pm on 2 May 2028 and she stays alongside overnight, sailing the next morning. Salerno follows on 4 May, Civitavecchia on 5 May with a 12-hour call, then a sea day into Barcelona on the morning of 7 May.
That maiden sailing is priced from £885 per person for an inside cabin, £1,120 for an oceanview and £1,340 for a balcony. The Haven starts at £3,010.
The seven-night Barcelona round trips that follow start between £1,055 and £1,240 per person, inside, depending on the week and the ports.
All fares are per person, two sharing, with taxes, fees and port charges included. They are cruise-only, so flights to Malta or Barcelona are yours to add.
Rome and Florence are the brochure names. Civitavecchia and Livorno are the ports, each more than an hour from the city, and that time comes out of a single day ashore.
A Barcelona week on Royal Caribbean or MSC in September 2027 worked out at £237 to £265 per person per night with tips in for a balcony, which is the yardstick Bella’s fares will be judged against.
The ship herself
Bella is a close copy of Aura: the same five design studios, the same four-deck Ocean Heights slide complex at the top, the same wraparound Ocean Boulevard on deck eight, a pool deck 15 per cent bigger than Aqua’s and Luna’s, and 159 Haven suites aft designed by Piero Lissoni.
Aura’s 22 restaurants and thunderstorm spa pool are the best guide to Bella’s interiors, since NCL has yet to name hers.
The hull art is by Australian muralist George Rose. She is being built at Fincantieri’s Monfalcone yard.
The bottom line
Eight years after the order, the Prima class is complete on paper: Prima, Viva, Aqua, Luna, Aura, Bella. One of the four unused names, Ombra, Vela or Ultima, may yet turn up on the new class NCL has ordered for 2030.
For UK cruisers the news is simpler. NCL’s newest ship will spend her first summer a two-hour flight away, which is closer than Aqua, Luna or Aura ever came, and from today you can book her.
The first 3,900 people to do it will board in Malta.
