Strait of Hormuz Transit Report — July 2026

Derived analysis

Direct answer

Is the Strait of Hormuz open? Commercial transit has partially resumed but remains far below normal. Between 2026-03-01 and 2026-07-19, IMF PortWatch recorded 1,400 vessel transits — a daily average of 9.9 against 103.2 in the same 2025 window, a 90.4% decline. July traffic to date averages 18.2 transits per day, about 20% of the February 2026 pre-disruption baseline.

This report quantifies the collapse and partial recovery using daily AIS-derived transit counts, keeps observed data separate from third-party event reporting, and documents exactly what this data cannot show — including vessels transiting with AIS transmitters off.

Derived analysis

Key figures

Observed transport data

What the observed data shows

Through February 2026, Hormuz transit levels were unremarkable: 89.4 transits per day in February against a 91.5 full-year 2025 average. The series breaks on 2026-03-01 (24 transits) and collapses from 2026-03-02, averaging 4.8 per day for March — including 2 days with zero AIS-observed transits. Across the full window since 2026-03-01 there have been 3 zero-transit days; the preceding seven years of the series contain none (the pre-collapse daily minimum was 19).

Recovery has been partial and uneven: 8.5 per day in April, 6.5 in May, 15.1 in June, and 18.2 for 2026-07-01 through 2026-07-19. The strongest single day since the collapse was 2026-06-24 with 51 transits — still 43% below the February daily average. The final week of the observation window averaged 12.1 transits per day, lower than the preceding week, so the series gives no basis to describe the recovery as steadily improving.

Tanker traffic collapsed hardest. June 2026 averaged 5.7 tanker transits per day against 55.5 in June 2025, and aggregate transiting tanker capacity fell from 2.29 million DWT per day in February to 0.32 million in June.

Observed transport data

Other chokepoints in the same window

The Hormuz collapse is not visible in the neighbouring corridors. Bab el-Mandeb and Suez continue at the depressed levels that have persisted since the 2023–24 Red Sea crisis, and Cape of Good Hope diversion traffic remains elevated but flat. Any rerouting associated with the Hormuz disruption does not appear as a level change in these three series during this window.

News context

Event context from named sources

World Monitor does not independently verify the events below; they are third-party reporting, listed with source and dates, and kept separate from the observed transit data above.

• IMF PortWatch’s disruptions database lists event “HORMUZ-26” (alert level RED, event type “other”) affecting the Strait of Hormuz chokepoint, with a start date of 2026-03-01 and no end date.

  Source: IMF PortWatch disruptions database (ArcGIS portwatch_disruptions_database) · source date 2026-03-01 · retrieved 2026-07-27.

• CSIS reports the disruption began on 2026-03-02 following U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran, that Iran declared the strait open on 2026-04-17 with the IRGC reversing course on 2026-04-18, and that the strait carries roughly a quarter of global oil flows.

  Source: CSIS, “The Strait of Hormuz in 8 Charts” (published 2026-04-22) · source date 2026-04-22 · retrieved 2026-07-27.

• The independent tracker straits.live counted 99 tankers “running dark” (transmitting no AIS) in the region and cautions that AIS-based transit counts may understate true flow.

  Source: straits.live independent Hormuz tracker · source date 2026-07-27 · retrieved 2026-07-27.

Methodology

Methodology

All transit figures derive from one source: IMF PortWatch daily chokepoint transit calls (portwatch.imf.org, based on UN Global Platform AIS data), retrieved on 2026-07-27 from the public PortWatch ArcGIS service and frozen into the versioned snapshot named below. A transit call is an AIS-observed passage; vessel classes (tanker, container, dry bulk, general cargo, ro-ro) and deadweight-tonnage aggregates are PortWatch fields, not World Monitor estimates.

Derived figures are arithmetic over that series only — period averages, sums, and percentage comparisons, each documented in the provenance table below. No smoothing, interpolation, forecasting, or cross-source blending is applied. Missing days would be listed explicitly rather than filled; this snapshot has 0 missing days across all four series. The report page is rebuilt deterministically from the committed snapshot, so every figure can be recomputed from the published data files.

Methodology

Limitations and known gaps

AIS undercount: PortWatch counts AIS-broadcasting passages. In a conflict zone with GPS interference and deliberate transponder shutdowns, physical transits can exceed AIS-observed transits by an unknown margin; an independent tracker counted 99 tankers in the region transmitting no AIS on 2026-07-27. The published counts are therefore a lower bound on total transit activity, not a measurement of total physical flow.

Publication lag: the PortWatch series ended at 2026-07-19 when retrieved on 2026-07-27 — an eight-day lag. This report does not estimate the missing days. Upstream revisions: PortWatch may revise history; this edition is pinned to its retrieval snapshot and states its retrieval time precisely so revisions are detectable.

July 2026 figures cover 2026-07-01 through 2026-07-19 only and are labelled partial wherever they appear. Official statements and market context are out of scope for this edition, as declared above.

Machine-readable data

Download the data

• strait-of-hormuz-transit-report-2026-07.csv — the focus-chokepoint daily series, 2757 rows (2019-01-01 → 2026-07-19), one row per day, columns documented in the JSON schema below.
• strait-of-hormuz-transit-report-2026-07.json — all four chokepoint series plus every published figure with its observation period, method, provenance, units, CSV schema, licensing/attribution notes, and version identifier.

Both files are versioned (report version 1.0.0, snapshot chokepoint-transit-2026-07) and regenerate byte-identically from the committed snapshot. Underlying data: IMF PortWatch; cite it when reusing the raw series.

Methodology

Figure provenance

Every figure in this report, with its observation period, transformation, and source. Recompute any of them from the downloadable data.

Methodology

Cite this report

Cite the report as:

World Monitor Research, “Strait of Hormuz Transit Report — July 2026”, version 1.0.0, published 2026-07-27. https://www.worldmonitor.app/research/strait-of-hormuz-transit-report-2026-07/ — underlying transit data: IMF PortWatch (portwatch.imf.org).

The canonical URL is stable, editions are append-only, and corrections bump the version and modified date rather than silently rewriting figures.

Live product

Track this live

This report is a dated snapshot. For the current picture: the live Strait of Hormuz status page shows today's disruption pulse, and the World Monitor dashboard adds map layers, alerts, and vessel context around it.

Programmatic access: the same chokepoint status and transit history are available through the World Monitor REST API and the MCP server for AI agents. Higher request limits and research briefings come with World Monitor Pro. The research itself stays free and ungated.

Declared gaps

What this edition does not cover

• Official statements: Primary-source government and IRGC statements are not independently collected in this edition; the timeline relies on the named third-party reporting below.
• Market context: Freight rates, war-risk insurance premia, and energy prices are not collected in this edition. No market claim in this report should be inferred from transit counts alone.

Why this report exists

Topic selection, from evidence

• Issue #5667 recorded a 2026-07-26 spot check in which World Monitor was absent from returned results for “Strait of Hormuz live traffic tracker” — the exact reviewed query q07 in the visibility baseline (use-case intent, chokepoints page family, IMF PortWatch as named source).
• The 2026-07-27 visibility baseline shows the category query already earning AI citations (4/4 platform mentions, 3/4 direct) while use-case queries have no observed visibility, so the next authority asset belongs on a use-case surface.
• The baseline’s expansion gate allows at most one evidence-rich report experiment before credentialed demand data arrives; this pilot is that single experiment.