P&O Ferries Schedules 2026

P&O Ferries is one of the best-known names on the northern European sea routes, and this page holds a small and specific corner of what it does: the Irish Sea short crossing and one North Sea overnight. Read it as a fragment, not a network.

Two hours across the North Channel

Cairnryan to Larne and the return each carry 6 departures a day, every day, timetabled at 120 to 125 minutes. The recorded span runs from 04:00 right through to 23:59, which is what a freight-carrying short sea crossing looks like: the boats work round the clock because lorries do.

Scotland to Northern Ireland is a road, not a voyage

This crossing exists as part of the road network between Britain and Ireland rather than as a journey in itself. Two hours, six times a day, at almost any hour — the design goal is that a driver arriving at the terminal rarely waits long. That is a different proposition from the overnight routes further south, and it is why the timetable looks nothing like them.

Eleven and a half hours to Rotterdam

Hull to Rotterdam departs at 20:30 and Rotterdam to Hull at 20:00, both timetabled at 690 minutes. One sailing a day in each direction, overnight. On this route the ship is the hotel: you board in the evening, sleep at sea and dock in the morning, which is why the crossing time is a feature rather than a cost.

The same operator, two entirely different products

Set the two side by side. The Irish Sea run is six sailings a day at two hours; the North Sea run is one sailing a day at eleven and a half. One sells frequency, the other sells a cabin. Both are P&O, and confusing the two when planning is a common and expensive mistake.

What is missing here, and it is a lot

Our data holds four routes for this operator. That is not the extent of P&O Ferries — the Dover crossings and the other Irish Sea services are absent from our timetable entirely. If the route you want is not on this page, the sensible conclusion is that we do not hold it, not that it does not run.