Yachts on order average a record 48.5m, and sub-40m loses ground
A record average, and a thinner small end
The average length of a yacht under construction has reached 48.5 metres, the highest figure the industry has recorded. Fraser put the global order book at more than 600 yachts over 30 metres in its 2026 new-build market report, while the Global Order Book count cited by SuperyachtNews this week runs to 685 projects. Twenty-six of those are over 100 metres, and together they account for more than 160,000 GT. The average has been climbing for several years and it has not paused.
Average length rises for a straightforward reason: the money is at the top and the yards follow it. A 90-metre contract fills a shed for three or four years and carries a deposit schedule a builder can bank against. Italy now accounts for more than 55 per cent of all yachts in build, with Azimut Benetti the largest builder by volume, while Turkiye follows with 90 projects and the Netherlands with 52. The Dutch yards hold the largest and most demanding hulls, which is why their project count looks modest next to their tonnage.
What is afloat against what is being built
Set the order book against the fleet and the shape of the problem appears. There are 6,239 yachts over 30 metres on the water. Boats under 40 metres make up 63 per cent of that fleet, but only 40 per cent of what is currently in build. The segment that dominates the water is not the segment that dominates the sheds.
An order book is a forecast of the fleet three to five years out. On these numbers the sub-40m share of the fleet shrinks every year the mix holds, while the 60 to 90 metre band, which has grown by more than 35 per cent since 2020, takes its place. For an owner that is not an abstraction. The pool of boats his own will be measured against when he sells is being reshaped now, and it is thinning at his end and filling at the one above.
Growth that does not reach the bottom line
Volume has not turned into profit at the small end. SuperyachtNews reports that one major builder in the segment posted a consolidated loss of EUR 12.9m in a year when revenues grew 23 per cent and prices rose 30 per cent. A business that raises prices by nearly a third, sells more, and still loses money has a structural problem rather than a demand problem. The builder was not named in the report.
The diagnosis offered is crowding. Dozens of yards build near-identical boats in the same size band and compete mainly on price, which leaves nothing in the margin to absorb a cost increase. Institutional capital, meanwhile, flows to the top of the market, where the assets are scarcer and the buyers fewer but deeper. Mid-market builders that need restructuring money are the least likely to be offered it, and that is how a crowded segment thins out.
The catamaran has taken part of the space
Some of the sub-40m order book has gone to a different hull form altogether. Sunreef Yachts now ranks sixth in the world by project count with 41 boats in build, totalling more than 1,100 metres, and its Sunreef 100 alone has 16 units sold. That is a catamaran specialist sitting among the largest builders in yachting, on a model line that barely registered a decade ago.
For an owner weighing a 30 to 40 metre monohull, the catamaran is now a direct competitor rather than a niche. It offers more deck and interior volume for the length, shallower draft, and for many buyers a steadier platform at anchor. Whether it holds value as well across a decade is not yet settled, because the volume is too recent to have produced a deep resale record. That is the open question a buyer here has to price himself.
What an owner should read into it
The last number is the uncomfortable one. A superyacht is typically used six to eight weeks a year. The Capgemini World Wealth Report 2025 counts around 21 million people worldwide holding between USD 1m and USD 5m in investable assets, close to 90 per cent of the high-net-worth population, and that is the group the sub-40m boat is built for. Very few of them will carry a year-round crew, berth, refit and insurance bill for six weeks afloat, which caps the market underneath 40 metres.
None of this makes a sub-40m boat a poor purchase. It still delivers the two things the marquee yards cannot, which are a delivery date an owner can plan a life around and, in the explorer segment, real ocean range. What the numbers do say is that the resale field is crowded and getting more so. A buyer in this band should treat build quality, brand depth and a specification that is genuinely his own as the things that will separate his boat from forty others when he comes to sell.