The Port of Antwerp is Belgium’s main seaport, lying about 80 km inland at the head of the tidal Scheldt estuary in Flanders, and it is Europe’s second-largest port after Rotterdam. Since its 2022 merger with Zeebrugge on the North Sea coast, the combined Port of Antwerp-Bruges handled about 13.6 million TEU and 266.5 million tonnes of cargo in 2025, according to the port authority. Its modern dock system dates from 1811, when Napoleon ordered Antwerp’s first lock and dock, and it matters because ships of more than 100,000 gross tons can sail that far into the continent, within easy reach of Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany and France.
13.6 Million TEU: Second to Rotterdam in 2025
Containers are the headline number. On Wikipedia’s table of Europe’s busiest container ports, Rotterdam led in 2025 with about 14.2 million TEU and Antwerp-Bruges followed with 13.63 million, far ahead of Hamburg in third at 8.3 million. In Lloyd’s List’s world ranking for 2023, Antwerp-Bruges placed 14th with about 12.5 million TEU. Figures from 2022 onward cover both Antwerp and Zeebrugge, so the jump that year partly reflects the merger rather than new traffic.
The trend line tells the story of the last two decades. Volumes fell by about 15% in the 2009 recession, from 8.66 million to 7.31 million TEU, and then climbed in most years, passing 10 million for the first time in 2016. Growth of that kind had already filled the right-bank terminals before the recession, which is why the port built a new tidal dock on the left bank; in 2007 alone container traffic grew 8.2% to about 8 million TEU. The Port Authority Building that manages this traffic, designed by Zaha Hadid, opened in 2016 on the Eilandje docks and houses about 500 staff.
266.5 Million Tonnes, Carried by Ship and Barge
By total tonnage, Antwerp-Bruges handled about 266.5 million tonnes in 2025, second in Europe behind Rotterdam’s 428.4 million and well ahead of the next ports on the list, Novorossiysk and Ust-Luga in Russia and Hamburg.
A breakdown from 2012 shows how that tonnage moves. That year the port received 14,220 seagoing ships carrying 190.8 million tonnes, of which 53.6% was in containers, and 57,044 inland barges carrying another 123.2 million tonnes. Liner services linked Antwerp to about 800 destinations. The barge figure is the one that sets Antwerp apart: canals connect the Scheldt with the Rhine, Meuse and Seine basins, including the Scheldt-Rhine Canal to Rotterdam and the Albert Canal to Liège, so a large share of cargo leaves the port by water rather than by road.
211 Metres: The Flare Stack of the Petrochemical Docks
Much of the rest is industrial. BASF’s plant in the docks is the chemical company’s second-largest site in the world after its home base at Ludwigshafen in Germany, and one number captures the scale of the petrochemical zone around it: the Flare Tower 1 at the port’s olefin plant stands 211 m high, at least the tallest flare stack in Europe. On the western bank of the Deurganck Dock, a pylon of power line EA-235 rises 165.95 m, the tallest strain tower in Europe.
This industrial belt is younger than the docks around it. A national Ten-Year Plan for the port, running from 1956 to 1965, paid for a new set of canal docks north of the city and drew new industry to the north-east of the Antwerp region. Today the docklands hold five oil refineries, and the petrochemical concentration around them is described as second only to the cluster in Houston, Texas.
1585, 1648 and 1863: Three Dates on the Scheldt
Antwerp’s numbers have always depended on who controls the 80 km of estuary between the city and the sea, most of which runs through the Netherlands. In the early 16th century, after the Zwin silted up and Bruges declined, Antwerp became the richest city in Europe: the Portuguese made it one of their main bases for Asian spices by 1504, its stock exchange opened in 1531, and the city is estimated to have accounted for 40% of world trade at the start of the century.
Then came three blows. In 1585 Alessandro Farnese, Duke of Parma, captured the city after a long siege, and most of its Protestant merchants left for the United Provinces in the north. The Treaty of Münster in 1648, which recognised Dutch independence, then stipulated that the Scheldt be closed to navigation, and Amsterdam took Antwerp’s place as the region’s trading centre. By 1800 Antwerp’s population had fallen below 40,000. Napoleon reopened the port, building the Bonaparte Dock in 1811 and the Willem Dock in 1813. Even after Belgian independence in 1830, the Dutch charged a toll on every ship heading upriver, until Belgium bought it out on 16 July 1863. The Kattendijk Dock (1860) and the Iron Rhine railway to the Ruhr (1879) followed, and by 1908 the port had eight docks. The Royers Lock, begun in 1905, let ships drawing up to 9.4 m reach the new Lefèbvre and America docks, and the port was important enough that Winston Churchill, then First Lord of the Admiralty, arrived in person on 4 October 1914 to direct its defence.
In the Second World War the port’s value was measured in days. British troops liberated Antwerp on 4 September 1944, but German guns still held the estuary, and the first Allied supply ship did not arrive until 28 November, after the Battle of the Scheldt cleared Walcheren. By mid-December about 9,000 civilians were working for the US Army in the port, and Antwerp was hit by more V-2 rockets than any other target of the war.
The estuary still shapes the numbers today. Most of the 80 km route to the city runs through the Western Scheldt in the Dutch province of Zeeland, which, unlike the Eastern Scheldt, could not be dammed under the Delta Works because Antwerp’s shipping needs it open; the Dutch raised and strengthened its dykes instead. Under a 1995 agreement between the Dutch and Belgian governments, wrecks were cleared from the shipping channel, the largest being the 131 m Alan-A-Dale, sunk in December 1944 and lifted in June 2003.
500 by 68 Metres: The Berendrecht and Kieldrecht Locks
Because the Scheldt is tidal all the way up to the city, most of Antwerp’s docks sit behind locks that keep the water level steady, and the port has built some of the largest locks on earth. The Zandvliet Lock was the world’s largest when it opened in 1967. The Berendrecht Lock beside it, opened in 1989, took that title at 500 m long and 68 m wide, 11 m wider than Zandvliet; its sill depth at mean high water is 17.75 m.
The Kieldrecht Lock on the left bank, opened by King Philippe on 10 June 2016, copies Berendrecht’s length and width but goes deeper, to 17.8 m below the Belgian reference level (TAW), which makes it the largest lock in the world by water volume. The records pile up in its construction figures: 9.1 million m³ of earth excavated, 22,000 tonnes of structural steel (three times the Eiffel Tower), about 1 million m³ of water to fill it, which took a week, and a cost of €340 million, half of it lent by the European Investment Bank. It also gives the left-bank docks a second entrance beside the Kallo Lock, so a single lock failure can no longer trap ships inside.
5.5 Kilometres of Quay at the Deurganck Dock
The fastest way to avoid a lock is not to have one. The Deurganck Dock, a tidal basin open directly to the Scheldt, received its first terminal on 6 July 2005. It has 5.5 km of quay, used 1.2 million m³ of concrete, and was built for a capacity of 8 to 9 million TEU. Since 2015 its north side has been run by MPET, a joint venture of MSC and PSA International, and its south side by DP World as Antwerp Gateway. On the right bank, the Europa Terminal (1990) and the North Sea Terminal (1997) were built on the river outside the locks for the same reason.
Room to grow is the number Antwerp is shortest of. Unlike Rotterdam, which has pushed west into the North Sea, Antwerp’s right-bank docks already reach the Dutch border, a result of the post-war Grote Doorsteek plan and the absorption of the villages of Berendrecht, Zandvliet and Lillo into the city in 1958. On the left bank, the Doel Nuclear Power Station sits downstream of the Deurganck Dock; in 2011 it was the nuclear plant in Europe with the most people living near it, about 9 million within 75 km. In October 2010 the port approved a €1.6 billion investment plan spread over 15 years, including land bought from the closing General Motors factory.
Zeebrugge and the 2022 Merger
The 2022 merger joined Antwerp to a very different port. Zeebrugge, in the municipality of Bruges, sits directly on the North Sea coast, so it has no estuary to climb. Before the merger it was already handling more than 50 million tonnes a year, was the world’s largest port for new-vehicle imports and exports (over 1.6 million units in 2010), handled over 2.5 million TEU in 2010, and received Norwegian gas through the 814 km Zeepipe from the Troll field. The new company, owned by the cities of Antwerp and Bruges, has pledged climate neutrality by 2050 and is introducing the Hydrotug 1, described as the world’s first hydrogen-powered tugboat.
To see how Antwerp’s figures compare with the port that still outranks it, read our guide to the Port of Rotterdam; for the river network that carries so much of its barge traffic, see the Rhine River guide, or follow the next port along the North Sea coast in our article on the Port of Hamburg.