Is the Strait of Hormuz open right now?
Short answer · as of Sat, 18 Jul 2026 05:00:59 UTC
The Strait of Hormuz is open, but disrupted. About 16 ships a day are still transiting — roughly 83% below the pre-crisis norm of ~95 a day. It has not closed.
Landfall reads this live, so you don’t have to guess from headlines. The single most direct signal is how many ships are actually moving: a chokepoint is open as long as tankers keep transiting — even at reduced volumes — and only truly closed if that traffic collapses toward zero. Right now the count is what the answer above is based on, updated every 15 minutes from IMF PortWatch satellite data.
The two live gauges
Landfall boils the situation down to two 0–100 reads. Strait Pressure is currently 70 — danger, meaning the strait itself is under serious strain. Market Transmission is 16 — calm, meaning the shock is not yet showing up in markets and prices. The live dashboard shows both in full, with every underlying indicator.
What “open but disrupted” actually means
A disruption is not a closure, and a closure is not instant pain. Tankers already at sea keep arriving, and stockpiles on land keep refineries running for weeks — which is why oil prices can move on the news long before a single barrel actually goes missing. If you want the deeper version, the field guide covers what happens if Hormuz closes and how much oil actually flows through it.
Common questions
- Is the Strait of Hormuz open right now?
- Landfall tracks this live from satellite ship-tracking. The strait counts as open as long as ships keep transiting, even at reduced volumes; it is only “closed” if traffic collapses toward zero. Landfall shows the current read — open, disrupted, or effectively closed — and updates it every 15 minutes.
- Has the Strait of Hormuz been closed?
- A full closure means ships stop transiting entirely. Landfall measures the daily ship count against the pre-crisis norm of roughly 95 a day, so a genuine closure shows up as the count collapsing toward zero — not as a headline.
- How many ships pass through the Strait of Hormuz?
- In normal times roughly 95 ships a day transit the Strait of Hormuz — the artery for about a fifth of the world’s seaborne oil. Landfall shows the current 7-day average against that norm.
- Does a Strait of Hormuz disruption raise gas prices?
- Not automatically. A disruption at the strait can push up oil prices, but whether that reaches pumps and markets depends on stockpiles, spare capacity, and how long it lasts. Landfall’s Market Transmission gauge tracks whether it is actually reaching the wider economy yet — separately from the disruption itself.
This is a descriptive read of public data ( sources, methodology), not financial advice or a forecast. Snapshot as of Sat, 18 Jul 2026 05:00:59 UTC; see the dated record for a citable version.