These are the cruise lines, ships and itineraries that won TPG Awards this year
The past year has been a big one for cruise fans, with lots of new developments in the cruise space.
Here at TPG, we've been particularly excited about the rollout of nearly a dozen major new ships from the biggest ocean lines, including MSC World America — the biggest MSC Cruises ship ever to sail in North America — and Royal Caribbean's record-size Star of the Seas.
Princess Cruises' Star Princess, Norwegian Cruise Line's Norwegian Aqua and Disney Cruise Line's Disney Destiny are three more recently unveiled vessels that have us hankering to get out to sea.
There have also been lots of exciting, new itinerary announcements and expansions to cruise loyalty programs that, together with all the new ships, give us lots of fodder for an expanded lineup of TPG Awards in the cruise category, which we are announcing today.
For the first time ever, as part of the 2026 TPG Awards, we're giving out awards for the best line in the fast-growing cruise niche known as expedition cruising, where the list of amazing itineraries has been growing fast, and for the best big-ship itineraries.
We're also giving out our first award for best river cruise ship to a brand that consistently wows us with its innovative, new itineraries.
Read on for our 2026 TPG Awards picks for the best lines and ships in those categories and more, as chosen by a panel of cruise experts at TPG who collectively have sailed on nearly 300 cruises on more than 40 cruise brands over many years of writing about the topic.
The panel included me, TPG's cruise team lead; Andrea Rotondo, TPG's director of content operations (and a longtime cruise writer and editor); and Eric Rosen, TPG's director of travel content.
Best New Ocean Ship: MSC World America
There was no shortage of wonderful, new ocean ships unveiled over the past year, including new vessels from Royal Caribbean, Princess, Norwegian, Disney, Virgin Voyages, Viking and Oceania Cruises. But in our view, at least, none were as notable for the North American market as our pick for Best New Ocean Ship: MSC World America.
Unveiled in April during a glitzy, star-studded ceremony, the massive Miami-based vessel is, quite simply, the first non-Royal Caribbean ship in years that can truly challenge the latter line's biggest vessels in the North American megaship wars.
Built on a scale until now only found on Royal Caribbean's biggest Icon Class and Oasis Class ships, the 20-deck-high MSC World America is, like those vessels, loaded with more family-friendly decktop amusements (including a water park with four giant waterslides), restaurants, bars and entertainment venues than you could imagine. It also offers a huge range of cabin types, including butler-served suites walled off in a private multistory complex with its own restaurant, lounge and sundeck.
Related: The 11 best new cruise ships of 2025
But it also has a secret weapon in the battle for North American megaship supremacy that the newest Royal Caribbean ships can't match: its incredible value proposition. With some cabins on seven-night sailings priced as low as $574 per person — less than $85 per day — it can be as little as half the cost to sail on MSC World America as Royal Caribbean's newest ships sailing out of Florida. Seven-night sailings on Royal Caribbean's new Star of the Seas, for instance, start at $1,250 per person.
In the "what you get versus what you pay" calculus that is front of mind for so many of our "maximize your travel"-focused readers, that made it a clear winner in the eyes of our expert panelists.
Best New River Ship: AmaWaterways' AmaMagdalena
It isn't often that a new river opens up for cruising, but that's what happened in April when California-based AmaWaterways became the first major river cruise company to operate sailings on Colombia's Magdalena River on a notable new vessel called AmaMagdalena.
Purpose-built for the 1,000-mile waterway, the 30-room river ship features spacious rooms with balconies, a restaurant where a Colombian chef offers curated menus highlighting the country's flavors, a fitness center, a spa and a sundeck with a relaxing whirlpool — a level of comfort that is rare on river vessels sailing in South America.
Still, it is where the ship can take you that is its biggest allure — and had our panel of experts in consensus that it was the Best New River Ship of the year. Flowing northward across Colombia between two Andean mountain ranges, the Magdalena River offers unparalleled access to historic towns such as Santa Cruz de Mompox, a UNESCO-listed colonial city, and jungles teeming with rare birds and other wildlife — both highlights of the ship's two itineraries. Visits with Indigenous communities and scenic cruising through the picturesque La Mojana region are also on the schedule.
AmaWaterways, meanwhile, isn't standing still on the Magdalena River. In October, it unveiled a second new vessel for the waterway, the 32-room AmaMelodia. In the river cruise space, the arrival of these two ships is not only the biggest new thing of the year but one of the most significant developments of the past decade.
Best Adults-Only Cruise Line: Viking
Adults-only cruise ships are relatively rare in the cruise world. But the lines that do them do them very well, and picking between these lines is always tough. Just last year, we gave this award to Virgin Voyages, the startup, adults-only cruise line backed by Richard Branson, in a neck-and-neck race with adult-focused Viking. But this year, Viking won the day by a tad in our expert deliberations.
Both brands are unusual in that they only allow passengers who are 18 or older, something they share with just two other brands for now, both Britain-based: P&O Cruises (for some ships) and retiree-targeting Saga Cruises (where the age cutoff is actually 50). A fifth brand, Oceania Cruises, just announced in early January that it would transform into an adults-only cruise brand.
Virgin and Viking were once again our finalists in this category, with the process of picking between them being a very apples-and-oranges exercise given their sharp differences. Virgin pursues a fun-seeking, younger-skewing adult crowd (think: flashy shows, hopping bars and late-night revelry) while Viking caters to a more enrichment-focused, older vacationer (think: string quartets and sopranos as entertainment, lots of expert lecturers and a heavy focus on destination experiences).
Related: Sophisticated design, elegant service: Why I love Viking ocean ships for cruising around the globe
While we still love Virgin, Viking won over our panel of experts this year with its impressive expansion of ships and itineraries that has made its particular brand of elegant adult cruising even more widely available than in the past. In just the past year, the brand has added nine new river ships from the Nile to the Mekong and unveiled a new ocean ship. It has also greatly expanded its wonderful array of add-on land tours designed to pair with cruises from the Americas to Asia.
Best Expedition Cruise Line: Ponant Explorations
Expedition cruising — a type of cruising that involves travel to the most remote, hard-to-reach places, such as Antarctica, on specialized vessels — has been growing enormously in recent years, prompting us to add this category to the TPG Awards for the first time.
In this still-very-niche corner of the cruise world, we've long been fans of Ponant Explorations, HX Expeditions and Lindblad Expeditions, three pioneers of this type of travel that each have decades of built-up experience. But for this first-ever award for best expedition cruise line, our expert panel quickly found consensus specifically around Ponant.
This was in large part due to Ponant's rapidly expanding array of truly once-in-a-lifetime ship-based adventure offerings that just can't be matched by any other brand.
These include epic first-of-their-kind voyages to the North Pole and the first winter expedition cruises to Canada on the first and only luxury icebreaker, Le Commandant Charcot. Unveiled in 2021, the 245-passenger Ponant vessel is by far the toughest passenger vessel ever built, capable of reaching places that no other expedition ship can reach.
Related: Expedition cruises: The ultimate guide to cruising to remote, hard-to-reach places
Best Cruise Line for Families: Royal Caribbean
Want to start a heated debate among TPG editors who regularly cruise with kids? Ask them about their favorite line for families.
Here at TPG, opinions on the topic vary widely, with fans of Royal Caribbean and Disney being a particularly large contingent but with other editors just as partial to Norwegian, Carnival Cruise Line and MSC Cruises.
All five brands have wonderful offerings for families in our opinion, with two of them — Carnival and MSC Cruises — being particularly good choices for travelers on a budget (both rank high on a "what you get for what you pay" metric). But for our award for Best Cruise Line for Families, we've oscillated in recent years between Royal Caribbean and Disney, the two leaders in the space — and this year, our expert panel came down firmly on the side of the former.
This is in part due to Royal Caribbean's recent unveiling of its most family-friendly vessel yet — Star of the Seas — in Port Canaveral, Florida, the family cruise mecca. Chock-full of more family-focused amusements than any other ship, including a stunning water park with six waterslides, the 5-month-old megaship joins Royal Caribbean's 18-month-old Utopia of the Seas in the port — the latter is also a major upgrade to its family-friendly lineup.
Together, the two ships offer families a better-than-ever choice of three-, four- and seven-night sailings from Port Canaveral that can be paired with visits to the nearby theme parks of Orlando — creating the perfect family getaway.
Related: Best kid-friendly cruises: The best cruise ships for kids
Disney also offers a wide array of wonderful family-focused sailings out of Port Canaveral that can be paired with park visits, of course. But on pure breadth of family-friendly offerings on a cruise out of Port Canaveral, it's now hard to beat what Royal Caribbean offers — unless, of course, you're the sort of Disney lover who never wants to stray from one of the company's many resorts on land and sea.
For the millions of hard-core Disney fans out there (and you know who you are), we won't dispute it: A Disney cruise is surely going to be your best bet.
Best Cruise Line Loyalty Program: Royal Caribbean
When it comes to the most robust, perk-filled loyalty programs in the cruise space, there have always been two brands in the clear lead in the eyes of TPG editors: Royal Caribbean and Norwegian Cruise Line — and it has always been a bit of a toss-up to us as to which one was better.
Last year, for instance, we gave this award to Norwegian's Latitudes Rewards program, which we felt had the slightest of edges when it came to value at each of its many tiers.
But this year, a major change to Royal Caribbean's program, called Crown & Anchor Society, has us tipping the balance in favor of Royal Caribbean.
Called Points Choice, the new super-perk will let passengers allocate the loyalty points they earn from sailings on Royal Caribbean's two sister brands — Celebrity Cruises and Silversea Cruises — to their Royal Caribbean loyalty accounts. Alternatively, they can apply the loyalty points they earn from Royal Caribbean sailings to their loyalty accounts with other lines.
Either way, this will let fans of Royal Caribbean and the other two lines build up status faster than in the past, as they can focus their points earnings in a single program.
Given that all three brands have a status match feature — that is, achieving higher status at one gives you higher status at all — this is an incredibly positive change for the program.
Best Big-Ship Itineraries: Princess Cruises
Among the five big cruise brands that account for the majority of big-ship cruises taken by Americans, Princess Cruises offers the most diverse array of itineraries (more than 170 in a typical year) by far, with stops in over 100 countries and on all seven continents.
That makes it the obvious choice for this first-ever TPG Award, which is focused on the best itineraries offered by the big-ship brands that dominate the cruise business.
While there are a number of small-ship cruise brands — mostly luxury cruise operators — that are known for globe-circling itineraries, Princess is, quite simply, the line you book when you want to explore every corner of the world without giving up the advantages of big venue-packed vessels.
The California-based line's 17 relatively large ships notably visit more than 345 different ports and destinations around the globe in a typical year and bring travelers to a whopping 100-plus UNESCO World Heritage sites — far more than its big-ship rivals.
Here at TPG, we particularly love Princess' increasingly diverse array of sailings around Japan, where it is the market leader in voyages for North Americans, as well as its epic sailings across the Pacific (some up to 131 days long!) and around Australia, South America and Europe.
Related: The ultimate guide to Princess Cruises ships and itineraries
Princess also offers the most diverse array of cruise and land tour options in Alaska, where it operates some of the state's top resorts as well as ships and is the clear market leader.
Every year, the TPG Awards honor excellence in credit cards, loyalty programs and travel. Please click here to read more about our winner-selection process and methodology for the 2026 TPG Awards.