The ‘Regatta’ has set sail on a 371-day journey across 62 countries, smashing previous records to become the world’s longest continuous scheduled cruise.
Millennials, Boomers, and a section of the Gen Z will recognise Phileas Fogg, the fictional Englishman immortalised by French author Jules Verne in his 1872 adventure novel ‘Around the World in 80 Days’.
Fogg bet his club members he could travel around the world in 80 days. He changed trains and steamships like his life depended on it. Now, more than 150 years since the book’s publication, a real ship has just set out to prove that one can take it slow and still go around the world.
On September 1, the ‘Regatta‘ sailed out of Rome’s port carrying roughly 670 passengers on a long, long voyage – for over a year. The voyage is planned for a total of 371 days. No changing trains; no racing the clock. Just one ship, one very long guest list, and 220 ports across 62 countries.
What makes it even more unique is that the voyage is the first one by ‘Explorations by Norwegian’, a brand-new cruise line launched jointly by tour operators Australian travel agency Flight Centre Travel Group and Florida-based Norwegian Cruise Line. The company itself sets sail with a title already stitched to its hull: the world’s longest continuous scheduled cruise ever offered.
File photo of the Regatta (Cruise Club UK)
Beating the cruise record by nearly 100 days
The world-cruise race has been quietly escalating in the recent years. Swiss company Viking Cruises made headlines in 2019 when its Ultimate World Cruise sailed 245 days from London, chasing a Guinness World Record across six continents and 111 ports, according to Fox News. Another Florida-based firm, Royal Caribbean, went further still in 2024, with a 274-night cruise on the Serenade of the Seas — a record that stood until now.
US-based Princess Cruises upped its own game in 2025, with a January 2027 plan for a 129-day journey to 61 destinations across 20 countries and three continents.
However ‘Regatta‘ cruise target doesn’t just beat that number. It plans to smash Serenade of the Seas‘s record by close to 100 days, a gap wide. If anything, it’s enough to make the previous “world’s longest cruise” look, in retrospect, like a long weekend.
Modest luxury, longer sail
While the Serenade of the Seas boasts a mini golf course, pickle ball courts, different types of bars, theatres, music and dance studios and stages, multiple pools and gyms, and a lot more, the Regatta itself is no floating megacity. There is no water slide, no ice rink, no Broadway-style theaters.
Explorations by Norwegian itself describes it as a “small ship”. The company describes the Regatta experience as a “new concept designed to balance small-ship intimacy with big amenities and expedition-quality destination immersion”.
File photo of the Regatta (Exploration by Norwegian)
With 348 cabins, it’s an “intimate”, almost old-world vessel, the kind of ship built for people who want to actually see the places they’re paddling toward rather than the ones painted on a pool deck mural. Having said that, it does boast of luxurious suites, a casino, a well ness spa, and an entertainment theatre for live music performances.
In Europe, Regatta will call at Santorini’s cliffside villages, Naples beneath Vesuvius, and the Scandinavian coastlines of Copenhagen and Helsinki. Then the ship will swing south into Africa, docking at Cape Verde, Cape Town and the spice-scented harbor of Zanzibar. From there it’s on to Asia — Hiroshima, Jeju Island, Colombo, the Maldivian capital of Mal — before crossing to the Americas, where the itinerary runs the astonishing gamut from Alaska’s glacial fjords to the mouth of the Amazon.
How much does the cruise cost?
Not everyone wants to vanish for a full year, of course, and Explorations by Norwegian has built in an escape hatch. Travelers can book individual segments of the route in Europe, Asia and the Americas, instead. For example, passengers can book a 19-night hop through Turkey, the Greek islands and Malta — sampling the voyage in bite-sized chunks rather than swallowing the whole itinerary whole.
The amenities, of course, do not come cheap. While the actual ticket prices are not known, a single ticket cost passengers anywhere between $71,450 and $76,583, according to the quotes reported by People and Metro. The cap has gone up to $180,410, as per People.
The shorter trips or truncated packages cost less.
