La Méridionale Schedules 2026

La Méridionale connects Marseille to Corsica, and unusually for a Corsican operator it also runs south across the Mediterranean to Tangier Med in Morocco. Two very different jobs from one French port.

Twelve and three quarter hours to Ajaccio

Marseille to Ajaccio departs at 18:15 and is timetabled at 765 minutes. Board in the early evening, sleep aboard, arrive in the Corsican capital in the morning. On this corridor that is the standard shape — the crossing is long enough that a daytime sailing would consume the whole day, so almost nothing runs in daylight.

Four days a week, not seven

The sailing carries a day mask covering roughly half the week rather than running daily. On a route where the alternative is a flight or a much longer drive round through Italy, that matters: a missed departure is not a few hours’ wait but a day or more. Check the specific date before planning a return.

Corsica is served under a public service obligation

French law requires year-round connection of the island at regulated conditions rather than only when it is commercially attractive, and the Marseille–Corsica routes are operated within that framework. It is the same logic behind the Norwegian coastal contract or the Gotland agreement elsewhere on this site: the ship sails in February because someone has undertaken that it will.

The Morocco route is a different business

Marseille to Tangier Med runs on the same fleet but serves an entirely different market — long-distance passenger and freight traffic between France and North Africa. It is not in our data, so if you are looking for that crossing this page will not help you, but it explains why the operator’s own site is organised around two separate destinations.

One sailing here, a full corridor beyond

We hold a single Marseille–Ajaccio departure. La Méridionale also serves Bastia and Propriano and runs considerably more frequently than this page suggests. Treat what is here as a sample of the shape rather than the extent of the service.