The world’s two largest cruise companies have played musical chairs with their ships and, at least for the next two years, the dust has settled. Carnival will soon have a significantly larger foothold than Royal Caribbean at the Port of Baltimore.

The Carnival Pride sails exclusively from Baltimore year-round. Late next year, the company will add a sister ship — also 963 feet long and built in the early 2000s — called the Carnival Miracle, the Miami-based cruise company said in a news release Thursday.

It’s expected to sail from Baltimore for half of the year, during colder months, beginning in fall 2027.

The news comes after Royal Caribbean loosened its Baltimore ties. Its ship, the Vision of the Seas, will sail from Florida this winter and spring but return to Baltimore for the summer and early fall in 2027.

Effectively, Baltimore will continue to have two cruise ships calling on the port at any given time. In the winter, it’ll be two Carnival ships; in the summer, one Carnival and one Royal Caribbean.

Cruisers often prefer one line or the other, so the reorganization is a win for mid-Atlantic Carnival customers. Baltimore is the busiest cruise port on the East Coast between Florida and New York.

“Baltimore has been an important homeport for Carnival for more than two decades, and we’re excited to continue building on our year-round operations with the addition of Carnival Miracle,” Christine Duffy, president of Carnival Cruise Line, said in a statement.

The Carnival Miracle — which, like the Pride, can carry more than 2,000 passengers — will offer weeklong sailings from Baltimore to the Caribbean from November 2027 through at least April 2028.

Carnival’s release does not specify where the ship will head after that. But Scott Faust, a travel agent who operates Destinations 24/7 Travel Services, said he would expect the Miracle to return to the West Coast for Alaskan trips in spring 2028.

The Maryland Port Administration signed a five-year contract extension with Carnival that took effect in January 2025, tying the line to Baltimore through at least the end of 2029.

The administration’s executive director, Jonathan Daniels, applauded the cruise port during a board meeting Tuesday. Following more than 8 inches of snow and sleet on Jan. 25, the Carnival Pride delayed its return to Baltimore by one day as crews cleared the South Locust Point terminal to allow passengers to disembark and board.

Royal Caribbean and Carnival are giants of the industry, combining for well over half the global cruise market share. According to documents filed with the federal government last year, Carnival hosted 13.5 million passengers in 2024, compared with Royal Caribbean’s 8.6 million.