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For thousands of Cypriots, getting to Greece no longer automatically means squeezing everything into a suitcase and heading to Larnaca Airport.
Since 2022, the Cyprus-Greece ferry has offered something the island had gone without for two decades: the chance to drive your own car onto a ship, bring the dog along, and arrive in Greece without setting foot on a plane.
But that option could disappear after 2027.
The ferry's operator, Scandro Holding Ltd, says the service simply cannot survive without continued government support.
"We have not succeeded in making the line sustainable," CEO Charalambos Manolis told the Cyprus News Agency, warning that 2027 could be the ferry's final season if the state subsidy is not renewed.
And that would be a major disappointment for a service that has clearly found its audience.
Cypriots are using it...just not enough
This year alone, around 8,900 passengers, 2,700 vehicles, and 371 pets have booked journeys on the ferry.
That's up from 8,238 passengers and 2,660 vehicles last season.
On Saturday, the AF Marina leaves Limassol carrying around 380 passengers, the busiest sailing of the 2026 season.
The problem is what happens outside the peak summer weeks.
Manolis says June sailings average around 100 passengers, rising to between 200 and 250 in July. It is only during August that the ship regularly fills.
"You can't have a viable line in three months," he said.
And therein lies the problem.
Unlike ferries travelling between Greek islands, where there is constant movement of residents, tourists, vehicles, and goods, the Cyprus service runs essentially as a summer passenger connection between Limassol and Piraeus.
For the remaining nine months, the ship needs to find work elsewhere. And without the flexibility to carry commercial cargo, making the numbers add up becomes difficult.
A service Cyprus had missed for 20 years
The sea connection returned in 2022 after a gap of more than two decades, backed by a state subsidy approved by the European Commission.
Its initial three-year run was later extended for another three years, covering the seasons from 2025 through 2027.
The current arrangement provides roughly €5.5 million in annual state support, according to previous government announcements.
The idea was that the route might eventually become strong enough to stand on its own.
According to Manolis, that simply hasn't happened.
Yet judging the ferry only by whether it turns a commercial profit misses part of what made it popular.
For people afraid of flying, families wanting to take their own cars to Greece, travellers carrying more than a suitcase, and pet owners who don't want to put animals on a plane, the ferry offers something airlines cannot.
It has effectively become another way off an island where almost every overseas journey begins at an airport.
And running it may get even more expensive
Keeping the connection alive could also become more costly.
Manolis warned that rising fuel prices are already a major concern heading into 2027.
There is another problem further down the road. A temporary exemption protecting certain passenger ships from EU carbon-emission costs expires at the end of 2029, potentially adding another substantial expense.
He argues that any future tender should therefore allow the subsidy to adjust when fuel prices or environmental charges rise sharply.
For now, however, the ferry is still sailing.
The final AF Marina journey of the 2026 season will leave Piraeus on Sept. 1, and the service is expected back in 2027.
What happens after that is far less certain.
After waiting 20 years to get a passenger ferry to Greece back, Cypriots may now have to decide, through the government, whether keeping that alternative alive is worth paying for.
