The Santorini cruise passenger fee and the visitor limit: who pays, how much, and what it changes ashore

Since Law 5162/2024, every cruise passenger landing on Santorini owes a fee per call that is highest from June to September; the cruise line pays it to the State, so nothing is paid at the quay. The island also admits at most 8,000 cruise passengers a day in 2025 and 2026. Greece Private Tours plans its port days around both rules; the sources are below.

Who pays the fee, and how?

The cruise line, to the State, for each passenger it lands and each call it makes; Article 27 of Law 5162/2024 sets it, and the ship’s operator settles it with the call. No passenger pays anything on the quay, no tour adds it, and no driver collects it. How your cruise line passes it on, in the fare or as a line on the bill, is the line’s own arrangement and not something we can read from the law.

How much is it, and what is the daily limit?

The tiers by season, the daily limit and the landing rule, as the port’s own sources state them and as we read them, each with its date:

The limit of 8,000 cruise passengers a day is the Port Fund’s decision for 2025 and 2026, counted at 80 percent of each ship’s certified capacity, with the monthly arrival plans published in advance; we found no decision for 2027, so we treat the figure as unconfirmed beyond next season and read the Port Fund’s decisions again before each one. A change to how ships are counted appears in secondary reports and on no official page we could read, so it is not printed here.

Where does the ship land you?

At the old port of Fira by tender, below the cable car, for most guests; since 2026 a ship certified for more than 1,000 passengers lands seven in ten of them there and three in ten at Athinios, the ferry port to the south, and smaller ships choose either. The ship decides who goes where. Our tours list both points: the exit of the cable car’s top station and the quay at Athinios, where the vehicle waits; a boat from the tender pier to Athinios is the way round the cable car for guests who cannot queue.

What it changes for your day ashore

The fee changes nothing on the day. The limit does: on a date with several ships the cable car’s 1,200 people an hour meet thousands coming ashore at once, and the queue at the bottom can pass an hour or two. That is why we set the meeting time from your ship’s arrival with the queue in mind, keep the driver waiting as long as it takes, and end every cruise day 90 minutes before all-aboard; the one-day-in-Santorini guide works a quiet day and a busy one through, and the cable-car guide has the fares and the timetable. We do not promise the return to the ship; we plan for it.

Will the rules change?

They can: the landing split was passed by a majority of the Port Fund’s board against the harbour master’s vote, the daily limit is decided season by season, and the fee is a law that a later law can amend. Each figure on this page prints the date its source was read, and the cruise port page carries the same facts beside the tours that fit a call.