The International Chamber of Shipping (ICS) has released the 2025-2026 Flag State Performance Table, which confirms continuing positive performance by the majority of flag States responsible for the safety and environmental performance of the world’s merchant fleet.
The 2025-2026 Flag State Performance Table, published by the ICS continues an over 20-year practice of providing an objective, data driven assessment of performance based on criteria such as Port State Control statistics and ratification of International Maritime Organization (IMO) and International Labour Organization (ILO) Conventions.
Highlights
The Flag State Performance Table provides shipowners with an objective tool to assess flag State performance and to encourage registries to meet a range of international standards.
The majority of the world fleet is registered with flag States that demonstrate continued strong performance on safety, environmental protection and labour standards.
Open registries continue to perform well, with many recording positive indicators across all criteria. As highlighted, those flag States with no more than one potential negative indicator (out of the 19 criteria used by ICS) include the ten largest flag States by tonnage:
China, Greece, Hong Kong (China), Japan and Singapore plus the five largest open registers i.e. Bahamas, Liberia, Marshall Islands, Malta and Panama. Together these flag States are responsible for about 70% of the world commercial fleet, although many other ship registries, including both national and open registries, also demonstrate very high levels of performance.
ICS encourages shipowners and operators to use the table to examine whether a flag State has substance and to put pressure on their flag administrations to make any improvements that might be necessary, especially in relation to safety of life at sea, the protection of the marine environment, and the provision of decent working and living conditions for seafarers…said Thomas A. Kazakos,Secretary General, International Chamber of Shipping.
In an exclusive interview to SAFETY4SEA, Thomas Kazakos highlighted the need for governments to actively support the recruitment and training of seafarers, as well as ensure that decent working and living conditions for seafarers are implemented.
Methodology
Port state control
A simple means of assessing the effective enforcement of international rules is to examine the collective PSC record of ships flying a particular flag. The three principal PSC authorities are the countries of the Paris Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), the Tokyo MOU and the United States Coast Guard (USCG).
All three authorities target particular flags on the basis of deficiencies and detentions recorded for ships flying that flag. The Table identifies flag states that feature on the Paris and Tokyo MOUs’ white lists and that have fully qualified for the USCG’s Qualship 21 program, and those which do not appear on their respective black lists/target lists. Ships whose flag states do not appear on PSC white lists tend to be subject to a greater likelihood of inspections.
The Table now also identifies those flags whose ships suffered no detentions within a particular PSC region over the previous three years, but did not meet the relevant minimum requirement of inspections or arrivals to be included in the MOU white lists/ Qualship 21 program. In order to be identified in this way with respect to the Paris and Tokyo MOU white lists, a flag must have undergone at least one inspection in the previous three years.
With respect to the Qualship 21 program, a flag must have made at least three distinct arrivals in each of the previous three years. As regards the USCG Target List, flags which are listed as ‘Medium Risk’ on the list are identified with a neutral indicator. This is in alignment with the way in which the three PSC authorities present this information.
NB: Flags which do not qualify for Qualship 21 have not been given red squares, as the list of flag states which qualify varies considerably from year to year and non-inclusion is currently not regarded by ICS as an indicator of potentially negative performance.
Use of Recognized Organizations in compliance with the IMO RO Code
The IMO Code for Recognized Organizations (RO Code) requires flag states to establish controls over ROs conducting survey work on their behalf, and to determine if these bodies have adequate resources for the tasks assigned. The RO Code also requires flag states to submit data to IMO on the ROs authorised to act on their behalf.
The Annual Reports released by the Paris and Tokyo MOUs on PSC contain ‘Performance Lists of Recognized Organizations’, which rank each RO into high-, medium-, low- and very low-performing. Using a combined list of high-performing ROs from the Paris and Tokyo MOU lists, the table positively identifies flag states which employ as many or more high-performing ROs, as they do non-high-performing ROs, and which have submitted their RO related data to the IMO in line with the RO Code.
Age of fleet
A high concentration of older tonnage under a particular flag does not necessarily mean that this tonnage is in any way substandard. However, a flag which has a concentration of younger ships may be more likely to attract quality tonnage than a flag state with a high concentration of older vessels. Calculations of ‘Average age’ are conducted through the UNCTAD Stat Database,
The average age is determined based on analysis of aggregated data of ships registered under a particular flag state. As a positive indicator, the Table therefore shows the 90% of flags (among those listed) that have the lowest average fleet age (the bottom 10% of those listed having the highest average age).
Nevertheless, it is strongly emphasised by ICS that the age of an individual ship is not an indicator of quality, and that the condition of an individual ship is ultimately determined by how it is maintained.
Ratification of the key maritime treaties and addressing any areas of potential underperformance demonstrates a clear commitment by governments to the international maritime regulatory framework on which the global shipping industry relies to operate efficiently in support of the global economy. …Kazakos highlighted.
