Number of ships · {{year}} · Global Firepower · {{coverage}} countries
Number of merchant ships by flag country (2026 count).
Global Firepower, the same 145-country/entity master list as the Military Power indicator: countries absent from that list read "No data", the 22 countries listed at 0 (mostly landlocked) are a genuine documented zero, with a dedicated step.
Log-spaced steps (median ≈ 122, 90th percentile ≈ 1,720, Indonesia maximum 11,422).
Indonesia (11,422 ships), an archipelago of over 17,000 islands where coastal shipping is a necessity, narrowly leads China (8,314) — but the ranking mostly reveals the weight of flags of convenience: Panama (8,174 ships) and Liberia (4,821) owe their rank to a foreign-owned fleet registered there for tax and regulatory reasons, not to a national merchant navy.