The concept photo of China's second domestically built cruise ship

The construction road map for China's second domestically built large cruise ship following the Adora Magic City has been released, China Media Group reported on Wednesday, and delivery is expected in 2026.

Experts said that the release of the construction roadmap shows that China's high-end manufacturing prowess in the shipbuilding sector is gradually maturing.

As the detailed designing blueprint and modeling work have been completed, the cruise ship was projected to enter assembling phase at dock in the middle of April this year and will be floated out at the beginning of next month.

Then the cruise will be undocked at the end of March of 2026, start test sail from June of the year, and will be named and delivered by the end of 2026, said the report. In addition, the outfitting work for the cruise was started on Monday, according to its builder Shanghai Waigaoqiao Shipbuilding Co.

The cruise ship has total weight of 142,000 tons, 341 meters in length and 37.2 meters in width, and has a total of 2,144 rooms, which has larger weight and room number from China's first domestically-built large cruise ship Adora Magic City.

Adora Magic City completed its maiden commercial voyage on the first day of 2024 carrying first batch of 3,000 Chinese and foreign passengers at the Shanghai Wusongkou International Cruise Terminal.

"The sound operation of the Adora Magic City shows that China has the ability to handle the whole industrial chain of large cruise ships independently, including design, manufacturing and commercial operation," Zheng Ping, chief analyst with industry news portal chineseport.cn, told the Global Times on Thursday.

The China Association of the National Shipbuilding Industry said on February 23 2024 that China's high-end ship and marine equipment construction has made breakthroughs. After delivering the first home-grown large cruise ship Adora Magic City, China has the ability to build all types of maritime ship products, said the association.

Data from China's Ministry of Industry and Information Technology showed that the nation's completions, new orders received, and backlog of orders in the global shipbuilding market ranked first for the 14th year running in 2023.

"China should further accelerate the development of shipbuilding and ensure quality, in order to promote domestically built large cruise ships to overseas clients in future," said Zheng.