A third of June's EUR 1.03bn yacht market was one Feadship

Read the June number twice

Per BOAT International's BOATPro report of 6 July, the brokerage yacht market reached a total value of EUR 1.03 billion in June 2026, more than double the figure for June 2025. The engine of that month was a single transaction. The 99.95-metre Feadship Moonrise, delivered in 2020, changed hands against an asking price of EUR 325 million.

That one hull is roughly a third of the month's entire value. Take it out and June still lands near EUR 705 million, which on its own beats last June's full total. The recovery BOAT International called in its full-year 2025 report, a EUR 7.5 billion year it described as "one of the best performing years on record", is holding into mid-season, but for anyone selling below 30 metres the shape of the number matters more than its size.

What Moonrise actually proves

BOAT International confirmed the sale on 2 July. Henry Craven-Smith of Burgess acted for the seller and Bruce Brakenhoff of Edmiston for the buyer, with the last known asking price at EUR 325 million. She is a 2020 delivery from Feadship's De Vries Makkum facility, 3,945 GT, with room for 16 guests and a crew of 32, which places her at the most documented and most pedigreed end of the market.

The lesson transfers down the size ladder. Moonrise sold against her asking price because that price already agreed with her evidence, and at 28 metres the evidence is the same in kind if not in scale. Survey status, refit records, engine hours and honest comparables set the number a buyer will actually meet.

Pricing a 24-30m now

The mid-year picture hands a seller in this bracket two usable facts. The market is absorbing clearly more tonnage than a year ago even with Moonrise excluded, and capital at the very top is moving again, which tends to loosen decision-making further down the ladder. Neither fact supports an aspirational ask.

Price against sold comparables in your own length and age band, not against a EUR 1.03 billion headline built on one Feadship. Have the refit file and class records ready before the listing goes live, because the buyers this market is producing move quickly on boats with clean paper. The window is open, and it rewards sellers who price like they intend to sell.

Who owned the Feadship Moonrise and why did she come to market?

Moonrise belonged to WhatsApp co-founder Jan Koum, who listed her only after taking delivery of a newer, larger Feadship of the same name, making this an upgrade sale rather than a distressed one.

Moonrise was built by Feadship at its De Vries Makkum yard in the Netherlands, with exterior design and naval architecture by De Voogt and interiors by Remi Tessier. Construction began in 2017, she was launched in February 2020 and delivered that July. At around 100 metres she ranked among the largest Feadships built by volume at the time, and among the longest superyachts produced at any Dutch yard measured on waterline length. She sleeps 16 guests across eight cabins and carries a crew of 32, with a beach club, wellness deck and helipad, and she won Best Displacement Motor Yacht of 3000GT and above at the World Superyacht Awards in 2021. Her owner was Jan Koum, the WhatsApp co-founder, who had her built as a deliberately quiet, private vessel.

The sale that made up a third of June's market was not an owner leaving the water. Koum took delivery of a newer, larger Feadship, also named Moonrise, in July 2025 and only then put the 2020 boat on the brokerage market in January 2026. Henry Craven-Smith of Burgess represented the seller and Bruce Brakenhoff of Edmiston the buyer, and the deal closed inside six months of listing, a fast turnaround for a yacht at this end of the market. BOATPro set the asking price at EUR 325m, and the same figure ran unchallenged across SuperyachtTimes, Boote-Magazin and Luxurylaunches, none of which reported a different number, and none obtained the actual closing price, which brokers at this level do not disclose. The detail worth noting is the motive, not just the headline: this was an upgrade sale by an owner already committed to a newer boat, not a forced listing, and that softens how much weight the EUR 325m figure should carry as a signal of buyer appetite generally.

Does June's EUR 1.03bn total mean the whole market is up?

No. Brokerage value is climbing fastest in yachts over 30 metres, while BOATPro's own half-year data shows the 24 to 30 metre bracket actually softened, so a same-bracket June sale like the 28m Sunseeker is a better benchmark for a 24 to 30 metre seller than the Moonrise headline.

June's EUR 1.03bn was not an outlier bolted onto an otherwise flat year. BOATPro, BOAT International's market intelligence arm, put total brokerage sales at EUR 4.05bn across 281 yachts of 24 metres and above in the first half of 2026, split 129 deals in the first quarter and 152 in the second. That is up from EUR 3.61bn on 272 sales in H1 2025 and EUR 2.21bn on 225 sales in H1 2024, the fifth consecutive half year of growth by BOATPro's count, reported independently by both Monaco Life and Rus Tourism News from the same underlying data. The average price per yacht has climbed alongside the total, from EUR 9.83m in H1 2024 to EUR 13.28m in H1 2025 to EUR 14.4m in H1 2026, so Moonrise sits on top of a market where deal sizes have been rising for two years, not a one-off spike on a flat curve. Her EUR 325m asking price alone still accounted for roughly 8 per cent of the entire half year total. Northrop and Johnson's separate count, in dollars and on a different methodology so not directly additive to BOATPro's euro figures, found 326 pre-owned superyachts changing hands in H1 2026, a volume decline of 8 per cent year on year, against a value rise of 15 per cent to USD 3.51bn. Both data sets point the same way: fewer deals, each one bigger.

That growth is not evenly spread across lengths, and this is what matters to a seller in the 24 to 30 metre bracket. Northrop and Johnson's Q2 2026 report flags the entry-level 79 to 98 foot segment, roughly 24 to 30 metres, as the one bracket that softened year on year, while the 98 to 131 foot band, roughly 30 to 40 metres, grew 18 per cent to 44 sales, and the 40 to 50 metre band logged 45 sales, ahead of 2025, 2024 and 2023. The lift behind June's aggregate came from size classes above 30 metres, not from the bracket most sellers here are working in. A same-month sale in the right bracket makes the point concrete: the 28.15 metre Sunseeker This Time Next Year, a 2013 boat from the yard's 28M series, sold in June 2026 at a last asking price of GBP 3.2m, roughly EUR 3.7m at current rates, with Arne Ploch of Camper and Nicholsons representing the seller and the deal done inside six months, much the same timeline as Moonrise. That is the realistic comparable for a 24 to 30 metre listing this year, a well-kept decade-old boat clearing near asking within half a year, not the multiple the Moonrise headline might suggest to an owner doing the arithmetic on his own boat.