ISA Launches Belita, an 80-Metre Flagship, for December Delivery

What did ISA Yachts launch on 15 September 2026?

ISA Yachts launched Belita, a 79.82-metre, 2,220 GT custom motor yacht, at its Ancona shipyard on 15 September 2026, with the builder calling her its new flagship.

The ceremony ran the way ISA's launches usually do: green, white and red smoke over the bow as Belita took the water for the first time, then a christening under a fall of blue and white confetti a short time later. Giuseppe Palumbo, sole director of Palumbo Superyachts, told the yard's own newsroom that "a launch is always a special moment, but seeing M/Y Belita in the water today holds particular significance for us." At 79.82 metres and 2,220 GT, she is ISA's largest yacht under its own brand name, surpassing the 67-metre Sea Raider X the yard delivered in July.

Belita carries a 12.5-metre beam and a 3.4-metre full-load draught, built with a steel hull, aluminium superstructure and teak decks. ISA has not published a delivery date beyond "2026" on its own materials, but BOAT International's BOATPro reporting puts handover in December 2026, three months after the launch. No price has been made public, and ISA has not named the owner. ISA's own history in Ancona, on Italy's Adriatic coast, runs back roughly a quarter of a century, the same yard that delivered Sea Raider X in July; Belita now stands as the largest hull the yard has built under the ISA name itself, as distinct from the Columbus brand Palumbo Superyachts also owns and which built the larger Dragon in 2019.

Who designed Belita?

Belita's exterior is by Espen Oeino International, a naval-architecture and design house with a long record of large custom yachts, and her interior is by Peter Marino Architect, the New York practice better known for Chanel and Dior flagship stores than for yacht work.

Espen Oeino has drawn exteriors across the size range ISA and its Palumbo Superyachts stablemates build in, and the firm's name on a hull this size is close to routine at the top of the custom market. Naval architecture is credited jointly to Hydro Tec and Palumbo Superyachts' own in-house team, the same combination that has carried several of the group's larger projects from GA drawings to steel.

Peter Marino is the less usual name. His practice has designed retail flagships and private residences for luxury houses worldwide, and it has taken on yacht interiors before, including the 46-metre Picchiotti motor yacht T.M. Blue One decades ago, so Belita is not a first for him. It is, however, a name an owner can put in front of the design pedigree of the boat when the time comes to sell, in the way a Zaha Hadid or a Foster and Partners credit works on a piece of real estate: the interior does not need to be photographed for the name to carry weight in a resale conversation.

How does Belita compare with Sea Raider X, ISA's last flagship?

Belita's 2,220 GT is almost double Sea Raider X's 1,149 GT on a hull only 12.8 metres longer, and she trades some of that sister yacht's speed for volume: 18 knots top and 14 knots cruising against Sea Raider X's 18.5 and 16.

Both yachts share the same engine family, twin MTU 16V 4000 M65L units, and both run steel hulls under aluminium superstructures. Sea Raider X, at 67 metres and 1,149 GT, carries 14 guests over five staterooms with 14 crew, delivered in July 2026 with exterior lines by Andrea Vallicelli of Vallicelli Design and an interior credited to Team for Design with Enrico Gobbi, a working yacht-design partnership rather than an outside architecture name. ISA has not published guest or cabin counts for Belita, which on a yacht this size usually means the general arrangement is still being finished around the owner's brief rather than fixed for marketing.

The gross-tonnage jump, nearly double on barely a fifth more length, tracks with a fuller superstructure and the extra internal volume Peter Marino's interior brief evidently called for, at the cost of a knot and a half of both top and cruising speed against her smaller sister. For an owner comparing the two, Sea Raider X is the faster, more traditionally proportioned yacht of the pair; Belita trades pace for volume and, on paper, for range.

How long did Belita take to build, and is that normal for Palumbo?

Belita was sold in 2022 through the brokerage Parsifal Yachting, began construction in January 2023, and is due for delivery in December 2026, a run of roughly four years that is well past the 27 months Palumbo's Columbus arm needed to deliver its own 80-metre, Dragon, in 2019.

Dragon, at 80 metres and roughly 2,300 GT, is the closest precedent Palumbo Superyachts has to Belita: comparable length and tonnage, the same 2,240 kW MTU engine pairing, and built by a yard under the same ownership group. Dragon went from order to delivery in 27 months. Belita's own build, on the dates ISA and the brokers involved have published, runs to roughly 47 months, keel to handover, close to double that timeline on a materially similar hull.

Some of that gap is explained by what is different rather than late: Belita's interior, drawn by an architecture practice working in yachting for the first time on this scale with this yard, and a fully bespoke brief that Palumbo has said repeatedly is more extensive than Dragon's. Neither ISA nor Parsifal Yachting has broken out how much of the four years was design work against steel-cutting and outfitting, so a buyer weighing a similarly bespoke order at this yard should treat 27 months as the floor Palumbo has proven it can hit, not the number to plan a delivery date around.

What don't we know yet about Belita, and what comes next?

ISA has not published Belita's price, her owner's identity, her guest and cabin count, or any independent sea trial, and none of that will exist in public until closer to her December 2026 delivery.

Every fact published so far on Belita, her numbers, her design credits and the quote from Giuseppe Palumbo, comes from ISA Yachts' own newsroom and BOAT International's reporting on it; no broker listing, class society filing or independent trial report is yet public. That is normal for a yacht three months from handover rather than a defect in the coverage, but it means nothing here has been verified by anyone outside the yard and its own trade-press relationships. A class society survey and any trial data of substance typically surface only once a yacht is delivered, insured or put up for charter or resale, which for Belita is still months away at the earliest.

Sea trials, if ISA follows the pattern it set with Sea Raider X, should run through the autumn ahead of a formal handover. A Monaco Yacht Show appearance is plausible given the timing, since the show runs 23 to 26 September 2026 and ISA showed Sea Raider X there as a world premiere within weeks of her own delivery, but ISA has not confirmed Belita for the show and this desk has found no listing for her there.