| IMO | 9863120 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 177,882 GT |
| Length | 345 m |
| Beam | 47 m |
| Passenger capacity (double) | 4300 |
| Crew | 1547 |
| Service speed | 22.0 knots |
| Builder | Fincantieri |
| Yard | Monfalcone |
| Launched | 2024 |
| Maiden voyage | 2025-10-04 |
| Class | Sphere-class cruise ship |
| Operator | Princess Cruises |
| Status | Active |
Overview
Star Princess is the second of Princess Cruises' Sphere-class ships, delivered by Fincantieri at Monfalcone in September 2025 and entered into service with a maiden voyage from Barcelona on 4 October 2025. At 177,882 GT she is, with her sister Sun Princess, among the largest ships ever built for Princess and the line's first liquefied natural gas (LNG) powered design — a step change in size and technology over the Royal-class ships that preceded her. She is the third Princess ship to carry the Star Princess name. The dataset's treatment of her launch year is worth stating plainly, because it can misread: the dataset launched year of 2024 is her float-out year — she was launched at Monfalcone on 26 September 2024 — not her delivery year, and her maiden voyage followed a full year of fitting out, in October 2025. That convention, launch as float-out, is the one this directory applies across the fleet.
Key specifications
The dataset records IMO 9863120, 177,882 GT, length 345 m, beam 47 m, double-occupancy capacity 4,300, crew 1,547, speed 22.0 knots, Fincantieri's Monfalcone yard, Sphere class, launched 2024 and maiden voyage 2025-10-04. Princess Cruises' own fact sheet rounds several of these figures in the line's marketing style — tonnage 177,800, crew 1,600, length 1,133 feet (the same 345 m), breadth 139 feet at the waterline-relevant measure against the dataset's 47 m overall beam — and gives 2,157 guest staterooms, 21 decks and a height of 200 feet. Her article gives 20 decks in total, 17 passenger-accessible with cabins on ten of them, and 2,162 cabins against the fact sheet's 2,157 — small counting differences between sources that are noted here rather than resolved by invention. The dataset's registry-grade figures (IMO, 177,882 GT, 1,547 crew) are the ones carried in the spec box; the variants are logged in this batch's notes.
Design and construction
She was built by Fincantieri at Monfalcone, Italy, the yard that also built her sister, and launched there on 26 September 2024. The Sphere class is Princess's new platform: an LNG-fuelled design — the class can run on liquefied natural gas, the industry's transitional fuel of the mid-2020s — organised around two architectural signatures that give the class its name and its identity. The Sphere is a vast glass-enclosed, outward-bowed Piazza at the ship's centre, taking the atrium that has anchored Princess design for decades and pushing it out to the hull sides for panoramic sea views; the Dome, at the top of the ship, is a glass geodesic structure inspired by the terraces of Santorini, a pool space by day and an entertainment venue by night. A third signature space, the Princess Arena, is the line's most technologically advanced theatre, reconfigurable between formats. Fitting out took a year from float-out, and her debut — originally trailed for earlier in 2025 — settled at October, with delivery on 26 September 2025, eight days before her first guests boarded.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
Launched on 26 September 2024 at Monfalcone, delivered there on 26 September 2025, Star Princess made her maiden voyage on 4 October 2025: an eleven-day Western Mediterranean roundtrip from Barcelona, per Princess's fact sheet. Her naming ceremony followed her Atlantic crossing rather than preceding her debut — she was christened at Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in November 2025 by her godparents, the actor Matthew McConaughey and Camila Alves McConaughey, in a ceremony at which, in place of champagne, a bottle of the couple's Pantalones tequila was used, per the trade report of the event cited below; her own article dates the christening 6 November 2025. She is the third ship of the name in Princess service, following the 1988-built and 2002-built Star Princess hulls — a reuse of a senior fleet name for the line's new flagship class, as the 2024 Sun Princess had done for her own name the year before.
Career by operator
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 2025–present | Star Princess | Princess Cruises |
Her career to date is a single-operator, single-name first year, completed in October 2026 and summarised by the first-anniversary reporting cited below: a Mediterranean opening from Barcelona, an Atlantic crossing to a Florida debut and christening at Port Everglades, a first Caribbean winter, and then a Panama Canal repositioning to a first Alaska season from Seattle that carried approximately 90,000 guests across more than twenty departures. None of that is itinerary detail of the kind this directory avoids — it is the shape of a flagship's first year, and it is the whole of her career so far. She became the seventeenth ship in the Princess fleet at her naming.
Onboard character
Her onboard character is the Sphere class's architectural argument: that a 4,300-guest ship can feel spacious and outward-looking rather than dense. The glass Sphere at her centre, the Dome above it, and a stateroom stock weighted overwhelmingly to balconies — over 1,500 balcony staterooms per Princess's debut reporting, including the Sanctuary Collection's private restaurant, lounge and adults-only deck — are the fixed design facts. Against her sister, Princess documents deliberate increments rather than changes of concept: expanded seating in popular restaurants, an enlarged non-smoking casino area and an expanded top-deck family and sports area. As the second ship of a class, her character is evolution, not invention — the class's ideas, applied with a year of operating lessons from Sun Princess behind them.
Major refits and incidents
None — and in her case the blank is simply youth. Star Princess was thirteen months old when this guide was written; no refit has fallen due and no incident is recorded in the sources consulted, including the first-anniversary survey of her service cited below. The one construction-phase fact that belongs in this section is the rescheduling of her debut: her entry into service moved to 4 October 2025 after construction timing slipped from the earlier 2025 window first announced, a delay reported in pre-launch coverage and visible in the record as the gap between her September 2024 float-out and September 2025 delivery. When her career accumulates the refits and incidents that older hulls in this batch carry, this is where they will be recorded.
Sister ships and class
The Sphere class currently comprises two completed ships: Sun Princess (2024), the class leader, and this ship (2025). They share the LNG plant, the 177,882 GT hull, the Sphere and Dome architecture and the 4,300-guest double-occupancy capacity; the differences between them are the documented increments listed above. The class is Princess's first new platform since the Royal class of 2013 and its largest by a wide margin, and it displaced a famous name in the process: the Sun Princess name the class leader carries belonged for twenty-five years to the 1995 Sun-class ship that now sails as Pacific World, covered elsewhere in this batch — a reminder that in this directory, names recycle and hulls are what count.
Fate and where she is now
Star Princess is in active service with Princess Cruises, a first-year flagship with her dataset record — IMO, tonnage, class, status — fully confirmed by her own article and her operator's fact sheet. Her October 2026 first-anniversary reporting records her returning to Port Everglades for a second Florida winter, with a second Alaska season to follow in 2027. Her fate, for the foreseeable future, is the one she was built for: the newest large ship in her line's fleet, at the start of the twenty-five-to-thirty-year career her class is designed to have.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Princess_(2024), https://www.princess.com/news/backgrounders-and-fact-sheets/star-princess-fact-sheet, https://www.cruisehive.com/celebrity-couple-to-serve-as-godparents-to-star-princess/187725, https://cruisemaven.com/star-princess-completes-first-year-of-service/