| IMO | 9781891 |
|---|---|
| Gross tonnage | 186,364 GT |
| Length | 337 m |
| Beam | 42 m |
| Passenger capacity (max) | 6730 |
| Crew | 1646 |
| Service speed | 17.0 knots |
| Builder | Meyer Turku |
| Yard | Turku |
| Hull number | 1395 |
| Launched | 2021 |
| Maiden voyage | 2021-12-16 |
| Class | Excellence-class cruise ship |
| Operator | Costa Cruises |
| Status | Active |
Overview
Costa Toscana is an Excellence-class cruise ship built by Meyer Turku in Finland for Costa Cruises, the Italian brand of Carnival Corporation. Delivered on 2 December 2021, making a maiden cruise from Genoa that month (16 December 2021) and entering full commercial service in March 2022, she is the sister ship of Costa Smeralda (2019) and, at 186,364 GT, the largest ship ever to operate for Costa and among the largest cruise ships in the world. She is also a technology flagship: like her sister, she is powered by liquefied natural gas (LNG), part of Carnival Corporation's Excellence-class programme that spread a common LNG platform across several of its brands.
Toscana was ordered on 16 December 2015 as the second of Costa's two Excellence-class ships. Her construction spanned the pandemic, which pushed her delivery from mid-2021 to December 2021, and her name — honouring Tuscany — continues Costa's practice of naming its flagships for Italian regions and the Italian landscape, paired with interiors themed on Italian art and design.
Key specifications
The dataset records Costa Toscana at 186,364 GT, 337 m in length and 42 m in beam, with a maximum capacity of 6,730, a crew of 1,646 and a speed of 17.0 knots, the builder's stated service speed. Her IMO number is 9781891 and her Meyer Turku hull number is 1395. Two variants in circulation deserve note. Her Wikipedia infobox gives capacity as 6,554 passengers and speed as 22 knots; the 22-knot figure is the class maximum rather than the service speed recorded by the builder, and the dataset's figures — taken from the Meyer Turku fact sheet and Costa material when the row was assembled — are retained here, with the difference logged in the dataset notes. Meyer Turku also rounds the class tonnage to 185,000 GT in some material; the measured 186,364 GT is the figure carried by her article and registry-derived listings.
Her power plant comprises four MaK 16M46DF dual-fuel engines, able to run on LNG or conventional marine fuel, driving a ship of 20 decks with a height of about 72 m.
Design and construction
Toscana was built at Meyer Turku's Perno yard in Turku, Finland. Steel cutting took place on 30 July 2019 — an occasion the yard used to debut a new plasma-cutting panel line — and her keel was laid on 11 February 2020, with the first hull unit being the roughly 100-metre floating engine-room unit built for the class. She was floated out on 14–15 January 2021 (the yard and her article differ by a day on the float-out date ), undertook Baltic sea trials from 11 October 2021, and was delivered on 2 December 2021 at a ceremony attended by Meyer Turku chief executive Tim Meyer and Costa president Mario Zanetti.
The Excellence-class design she embodies was Carnival Corporation's standardised large-ship platform of the late 2010s: a common LNG-powered hull and machinery arrangement, adapted in internal layout and styling for each brand. For Costa, the adaptation is heavily Italian in theme, and the ship's volumes are organised around large multi-deck central spaces rather than the single-atrium arrangement of earlier Costa flagships.
Naming, launch and maiden voyage
Costa Toscana's name was announced with the order; in line with her sister Smeralda (named for Sardinia's Costa Smeralda), Toscana takes her name from an Italian region synonymous with landscape and art. She was launched at Turku in January 2021 and delivered that December. Her maiden voyage sailed on 16 December 2021, a short inaugural cruise from Genoa; her full commercial debut followed on 5 March 2022, the date an earlier dataset row recorded as the maiden voyage. No separate christening ceremony details were established from a primary source for this guide.
Career by operator
Toscana has been a Costa Cruises ship from delivery, owned within Carnival Corporation, with no transfer, charter or renaming in her record.
| Period | Name | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| 2022–present | Costa Toscana | Costa Cruises |
Onboard character
Toscana's character is the Costa flagship formula at maximum scale: a floating celebration of Italy, designed for a multilingual European family market. The design centrepiece described in launch coverage is the Colosseo, a three-deck entertainment space at the ship's heart with tiered seating and large LED surfaces, supplemented by piazza-style venues that function as indoor town squares — the architectural signature of the Smeralda/Toscana pair. Dining follows the same national theme, with Italian regional cooking as the headline offer among a large count of restaurants and bars.
Technologically, her character is defined by the LNG plant: the Excellence class was Carnival's statement that its largest ships would move to gas fuel, with the exhaust and efficiency benefits that follow, and Toscana and Smeralda were the ships that carried that statement for the Costa brand. For the directory's purposes, it is the combination — Italy-themed, family-scale, gas-powered — that defines her, rather than any list of individual venues, which change with refits.
Major refits and incidents
No major refits or incidents are recorded for Costa Toscana in the sources consulted. Her delivery delay — from a planned June 2021 to December 2021, attributed to the pandemic's disruption of the yard and supply chain — is the principal disruption in her early record.
Sister ships and class
Toscana's direct sister is Costa Smeralda (Meyer Turku hull 1394, delivered December 2019), the first Excellence-class ship for Costa. The wider Excellence class is Carnival Corporation's multi-brand platform: ships of the same basic design serve AIDA Cruises (AIDAnova and sisters), P&O Cruises (Iona, Arvia), Carnival Cruise Line (Mardi Gras, Carnival Celebration, Carnival Jubilee) and Costa. The dataset assigns Toscana no class name in its class field; she is identified here, following her own article, as Excellence class.
Fate and where she is now
Costa Toscana is an active ship in the Costa Cruises fleet, recorded in the dataset with the status "Operating". Consistent with this directory's evergreen policy, no itinerary or deployment information is given. Her place in the record is as Costa's largest ship, the second of its LNG-powered Excellence-class pair, and the last Costa flagship delivered under the Carnival platform programme of the 2010s.
Sources: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Toscana