Fewer ferries during Pride 2026: GVB filled the ferry roster just in time

Around Amsterdam Pride 2026, fewer ferries were set to cross the IJ at exactly the moment the city was heading into its busiest weekend of the summer. On 31 July 2026, GVB announced that it could not fill the ferry roster and that one fewer ferry would sail on two of its busiest connections. For anyone travelling between the city centre and Amsterdam Noord during Pride, that meant longer waits and fuller decks. A day later the news improved: after an extra call-out to staff, GVB managed to fill most of the roster after all. Even so, the episode shows once again how fragile the Amsterdam ferries have become now that skippers are structurally in short supply.

What GVB announced for the Pride weekend

The announced reduction hit the two busiest IJ crossings in the city. Between 13:12 and 20:12, one fewer ferry was to sail between Centraal Station and Buiksloterweg — the Buiksloterweg ferry that runs as line F3. On the route between Centraal Station and the NDSM wharf, the timetable was to be adjusted between 14:12 and 22:23. On both connections that would leave two ferries in service instead of three, cutting capacity by roughly a third. GVB said it would deploy the available capacity as efficiently as possible and station boarding marshals at busy moments to support passenger flow and safety. The operator explicitly warned travellers to expect longer waiting times and extra crowding on board.

After an extra call-out, the roster was largely filled

By Saturday 1 August the damage turned out to be smaller than feared, though a gap remained in the evening service. The IJ ferries did sail to the regular timetable during the day, AT5 reported after checking with GVB. Only after 19:00 was one fewer ferry running from NDSM-werf to Centraal Station — precisely the window in which many visitors want to head back into town. According to a spokesperson this was possible because staff rearranged their plans after an extra call-out and came in to work anyway. GVB advised passengers facing crowds at NDSM to cycle on to the Buiksloterweg ferry, a fallback that is often faster at peak moments than waiting for the next departure. That a major weekend hinges on staff goodwill says a great deal about how thin the crewing has become.

The skipper shortage behind the adjusted timetable

The direct cause of the adjusted timetable is the skipper shortage GVB has been wrestling with for months. Written questions from the VVD made clear that the operator has roughly 33 unfilled skipper vacancies, and that a larger outflow is expected in the coming years because of retirements. The shortage has built up gradually: where GVB could once largely replace departing skippers, qualified skippers are now simply hard to find. We described the scale of that problem earlier in our article on the skipper shortage, and the response to it in our piece on the GVB measures against the skipper shortage. One of the solutions GVB is exploring is the so-called one-skipper model, in which a ferry sails with one skipper and one deckhand who watches over the crossing but does not steer. The Pride weekend makes concrete why that debate is happening now.

Not the first time this year the roster has strained

Pride was not the first moment in 2026 when the ferry roster came up short, and for commuters that pattern may be the most important signal. On the weekends of 13–14 June and 20–21 June, fewer ferries could also be deployed because too few skippers were available. Over the weekend of 12–13 June all three Centraal Station lines ran less frequently and roughly 21 service hours were lost, which translated directly into longer queues on the piers. That run of incidents coincides with the summer 2026 timetable, under which many IJ routes already run at wider intervals. Fewer planned sailings plus thinner crewing leaves little margin the moment anything goes wrong, an effect that also returns in our report on rush-hour crowding. For daily crossers, the difference between two and three ferries on a line is not a detail but the difference between walking straight on and missing a departure.

Events remain a stress test for the IJ ferries

Large events on and around the IJ put the ferry network under structural pressure, and Pride is a good example. The ferries carried about 29 million passengers in 2025, and on peak days a wave of visitors arrives on top of that, disrupting normal peak patterns entirely. We saw the same thing earlier during SAIL 2025, when ferries were suspended at peak moments and Noord passengers switched en masse to an overcrowded metro. The difference with Pride 2026 is that this time the reduction did not stem from safety or waterway considerations but from staff planning — a cause that is in principle solvable. More figures on passenger numbers and growth can be found in our ferry statistics, which show why pressure on crewing will stay high for the time being. As long as housing in Noord keeps growing, every event peak becomes another test of the same tight roster.

How to stay ahead of an adjusted timetable

The practical lesson of this weekend is that an adjusted timetable is sometimes only confirmed a day in advance — or even later. GVB communicated the reduction on 31 July and corrected it on 1 August, which means a check on the day itself is worth more than an announcement from the day before. If you cross regularly, it is best to look at live departure times via the ferry hub or one of the ferry apps before you walk to the pier. When one stop is crowded it almost always pays to switch to a neighbouring crossing, exactly as GVB advised from NDSM to Buiksloterweg. All news about changes, cancellations and works is collected on our news index, so you can spot the patterns sooner. That way you keep enough margin during events to still reach the other side on time.

Pont is an independent travel-information source and not an official GVB product. We summarise public reporting — in this case coverage by AT5 and NH Nieuws of the ferry roster during Pride 2026 — so you can quickly judge whether your crossing may be affected. The times, figures and measures mentioned are a snapshot and may be revised by GVB and the city. When in doubt, always check GVB's current departure times and service information before you leave. That way you stay up to date on crewing, event disruption and possible cancellations on the Amsterdam ferries.