There is one fact that, more than any celebratory press release, reveals where the top end of yachting is heading: while series production goes through a phase of normalisation after the post-pandemic euphoria, the full custom segment is not merely holding firm – it is once again where shipyards are concentrating investment, production capacity and brand identity. This is neither a passing fashion nor a nostalgic return to the craftsmanship of another era: it is a precise industrial choice, driven by demand that has changed in nature. Today’s owner, particularly in the over-50-metre bracket, is no longer looking for a product, however excellent: they are looking for a project that does not yet exist.
A market that rewards uniqueness
The Global Order Book 2026 compiled by Boat International, the most complete snapshot of worldwide construction above 24 metres, records more than a thousand yachts in build and confirms a now structural dominance: Italian builders account for roughly half of the world’s superyacht production. Yet it is inside that figure that the most interesting trend lies. Growth is coming not so much from volumes, which the major groups deliberately keep under control, as from the average value of contracts and the growing weight of unique projects – those in which the yard starts not from an existing platform but from a blank sheet of paper.
Confirmation also comes from international awards. Robb Report’s Best of the Best 2026 in the yachting category went to Amor à Vida, the 67-metre full custom yacht by CRN, born of the collaboration between the Ancona shipyard, Ferretti Group’s Superyacht Division and studio Nuvolari Lenard, with interiors developed under the creative direction of Valentina Zannier. The group itself read the award not as the celebration of a single vessel but as the validation of a strategy: commanding the highest tier of the market with an approach that combines industrial capability and a tailoring culture.
The mature client, the true raw material
If one element sets full custom apart from the rest of production, it is neither technology nor budget: it is the client. Federico Rossi, chief operating officer of Rossinavi – the Viareggio yard that closed 2025 with a turnover of €120 million while building no more than two vessels a year – put it plainly. A one-off, Rossi observed, requires a mature owner: someone with real cruising experience, who knows exactly what they want and is seeking that added value which a series product, by its very nature, cannot provide.
It is an observation that overturns the usual perspective. Full custom is not the more expensive version of the same market: it is a different market altogether, with different timescales, in which the relationship between yard and client lasts years and the design phase carries as much weight as construction itself. It is no coincidence that Rossinavi deliberately caps its output to safeguard in-house control and quality, with 160 direct employees and an estimated one thousand workers in its supply chain. A boutique philosophy that programmatically renounces scale to protect margins and, above all, reputation.
The yards raise the stakes: new projects, new signatures
2026 is delivering a sequence of concrete signals. In June, Tankoa Yachts held the coin ceremony at Civitavecchia for Project Dream, a fully custom 61-metre sold in the summer of 2025 and due for delivery in early 2029: concept and exterior lines by Horacio Bozzo Design, naval architecture by Axis Group, interiors by Sinot Yacht Architecture & Design, a studio chosen directly by the owner. In the same days CRN launched the 70-metre Project Thunderball, while Heesen unveiled its new 72-metre flagship, Project Ananda.
More emblematic still is the case of Cantieri di Pisa, the historic brand relaunched under new management, which chose a fully bespoke 40-metre – commissioned by a French owner – as the first build of its new era: a steel hull, an aluminium and fibreglass superstructure, and a metallic silver livery paying homage to the legendary Akhir series. When a yard starting afresh decides to start from full custom, rather than from a range model that would be far easier to industrialise, the strategic message is hard to misread.
Slots full until 2029: the paradox of scarcity
The return of full custom does, however, have a flip side that is also its most solid confirmation: saturated production capacity. The order books of the major bespoke superyacht builders now stretch across multi-year horizons: Feadship‘s availability is being discussed in the trade press over windows extending to 2028–2029, Lürssen has contracts covering at least mid-2027 and has strengthened its large-hull capacity with the acquisition of Nobiskrug, while in Italy Sanlorenzo’s orders across its metal ranges likewise reach towards the end of the decade.
The scarcity of build slots is becoming a competitive factor in its own right: for an owner seeking a unique project, waiting time is now part of the price, and the availability of space in a shipyard is worth as much as a designer’s signature. This is also why the groups are investing once more in infrastructure, sheds and docks: not to build more, but to build bigger and more bespoke.
Why it pays: value beyond turnover
The underlying question remains: why, in a period of macroeconomic uncertainty, are shipyards choosing to back the most complex, slowest and riskiest segment of production? The answer lies in the nature of the clientele. The UHNWI bracket – the world’s largest fortunes – has proved largely immune to interest-rate swings and to the volatility that has cooled the mass boating market. And for this clientele, full custom is the only product that answers the logic of contemporary luxury: not the ostentation of the limited edition, but the unrepeatability of the one-off.
Then there is a value that never appears in quarterly accounts: every successful one-off is a technological and stylistic manifesto that feeds the brand for years, generating awards, covers and, above all, new clients. In an industry where reputation is built by accumulation and lost in a single botched delivery, the unique project is at once the greatest risk and the most profitable investment. The yards have understood this: the future of yachting’s top end is measured not in units produced, but in unrepeatable stories brought to the water.
