Ferries crossing the Black Sea

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⚠️ Black Sea: Limited Ferry Routes

Due to the current situation in and around the Black Sea, ferry services are limited. This isn't the only reason though: also economic factors and improved road networks had a negative influence in the total ferry routes in the Black Sea.

Main Route: Butami - Burgas

The ferry from Georgia to Bulgaria remains operational and, as far as we know, is currently one of the few active ferry crossings in the Black Sea from East to West and vice versa.

– You can book this route by e-mail or in the port here .

All Routes crossing the Black Sea

There used to be many ferries in and around the Black Sea, we listed all possible old routes & the current status below:

Route	Ports	Operated by	Current Status
Bulgaria - Georgia	Burgas to Batumi	Pbm.bg	Operational
Romania - Georgia	Poti to Contanta	ukrferry.com	Operational
Ukraine - Turkey	Odessa to Istanbul	ukrferry.com	Susp. / Disc.
Ukraine - Turkey	Chornomorsk to Istanbul	ukrferry.com	Susp. / Disc.
Ukraine - Georgia	Odessa to Batumi	ukrferry.com	Susp. / Disc.
Ukraine - Georgia	Chornomorsk to Poti/Batumi	ukrferry.com	Susp. / Disc.
Turkey - Russia	Istanbul to Novorossiysk	FESCO	Susp. / Disc.
Bulgaria - Georgia	Varna to Batumi/Poti	https://www.pbm.bg	Susp. / Disc.
Romania - Georgia	Constanța to Batumi	http://romcargo.com	Susp. / Disc.
Russia - Georgia	Sochi to Batumi	Express Batumi	Susp. / Disc.
Russia - Turkey	Sochi to Trabzon	Not available	Susp. / Disc.
Ukraine - Bulgaria	Odessa to Varna	http://ukrferry.com	Susp. / Disc.
Romania - Turkey	Constanța to Istanbul	https://www.navrom.ro	Susp. / Disc.
Turkey - Georgia (minor routes)	Sinop to various Georgian ports	Not available	Susp. / Disc.
Turkey - Ukraine (minor routes)	Samsun to Sevastopol	Not available	Susp. / Disc.

As you can see in the table above only a few ferries are still running. The Poti to Constanta ferry route can be booked here . And at PBM you can book the Batumi to Burgas route.

Important to mention:
The routes are not easy to book through a website, you have to do it by e-mail of which you can find the info on the websites, let us know through the comments if it worked for you.

Burgas to Batumi crossing

There are a handful of Video's about this crossing available on YouTube, we liked this one the most:

Made by Lauren Hedges in 2023, which also shows quite an empty ship. You can also see that it's more a cargo ship ‘with' passengers.

The Schedule of this ferry:

The vessel leaves like every 7 days from either Batumi or Burgas. It arrive 3 days later on it's destination.

A return route looks like this (sample)

Departure from Burgas: 27th September 2024
Arrival in Batumi: 30th September 2024
Return Departure from Batumi: 30th September 2024
Arrival in Burgas: 3rd October 2024

Booking and Check-In Information:

Passengers must check in by 18:00 on the day of the scheduled departure from both Batumi and Burgas. After this time, availability cannot be guaranteed, and those on the waiting list will be prioritized.

Navibulgar Crossings

The Varna to Batumi/Poti routes by Navibulgar might still be operational, we got the data from a PDF on the Navbul.com website, unfortunately a PDF without a timestamp. Quite sure you need to contact (e-mail: ferry@navbul.com) them for more info if you want to cross the Black Sea on the following routes:

Chornomorsk (Ukraine) – Poti / Batumi (Georgia) – 48 hours
Varna (Bulgaria) – Chornomorsk (Ukraine) – 20 hours
Varna (Bulgaria) – Poti / Batumi (Georgia) – 54 hours

Tracking the Ships / Vessels

A good ‘hack' to see if the ferries are running in the Black Sea is to use the Live tracker of the ferries that (used to) run in the Black Sea, here for instance you can see a live view of the UKR Ferry vessels: