On 30 October 2025 the full chamber of the Hellenic Parliament ratified the sub-concession that will give the Port of Corfu a marina for the largest yachts afloat. It will have 410 berths for vessels of up to 140 metres. LAMDA Marinas will build and run it over a term of 40 years, with an investment of more than €50 million. The contract had been signed exactly a year earlier, on 30 October 2024. The parties were LAMDA Marinas Investments, the Hellenic Republic Asset Development Fund (the state body that manages public assets) and the Corfu Port Authority. The vote was the last political step before work on the water.
The size of the largest berth
The figure that matters most is 140 metres. A marina is defined less by how many vessels it holds than by the largest one it can hold properly. That means enough depth, a real berth instead of a night tied up along a quay, and power, water and a boatyard behind it. LAMDA’s own description of the project gives a range of 30 to 140 metres across the 410 berths. The bill put before Parliament set roughly 100 of them at the scale of a megayacht.
The Ionian Sea, off the west coast of Greece, has always had open water and shelter. What it has lacked is servicing for yachts of this size. Servicing decides whether a vessel only passes through a sea or stays in it.
Where it will stand
The marina will be built at the Port of Corfu, west of the cruise pier, near the passenger terminal. It will sit inside the working harbour of Corfu, with no new shore cut for it. With it comes a land zone of 39,400 square metres. This will hold shops and restaurants, a hotel, offices, green space, pedestrian streets, sports facilities, parking and an area set aside for boat maintenance.
The choice of site says something about what a marina is for. On an empty headland, a marina becomes a closed compound. Beside the passenger terminal of a working port, its crews walk straight into a town that was there before them.
What the state receives
The state’s return comes in three parts: a one-off payment of €9.7 million, then 7.77 per cent of the marina’s turnover, and a guaranteed minimum of €79.3 million across the 40 years. The total comes to more than €89 million. Half of what the public bodies receive, some €40 million, is set aside to improve the port’s own infrastructure.
LAMDA Marinas Investments had been named Preferred Investor in July 2023. When the contract was signed, its managing director, Stavros Katsikadis, said the agreement began the creation of a large Greek marina some 20 years after the previous marina contract in Greece.
A divided vote
The ratification passed on the government’s majority, against most of the chamber. New Democracy voted in favour and PASOK declared itself present. SYRIZA, the Communist Party, New Left, Greek Solution, Niki and Plefsi Eleftherias voted against. A 40-year concession over public waterfront is more than a technical matter, and Parliament treated it as such.
The government told the chamber that the marina would be built to current standards of energy efficiency and environmental management. It described a green port: lower emissions, controlled pollution, renewable energy, and proper management of water and waste. Whether the construction programme matches that description will become clear in the years after the vote.
The third marina
Corfu will be the third marina in LAMDA’s network, after Flisvos on the Athens Riviera and Agios Kosmas at the Ellinikon. Those two lie within a few nautical miles of each other on the same stretch of coast near Athens. Corfu sits at the far north-western edge of Greece, where a vessel coming south from the Adriatic first reaches Greek water.
A group that already holds the approaches to Athens will now hold the northern entrance as well. The two ends of the same passage begin to read as one itinerary, where before they were two unrelated stops.
For owners of large yachts
For an owner taking a large yacht through the Ionian, the change is one of purpose. Corfu has long been a first landfall: a place to clear customs, take on fuel and head south for Paxos, Antipaxos and the Lefkada channel. A marina built for 140 metres, with a boatyard and a land zone behind it, will let a vessel of that size be based on the island, where before it was only admitted.
The concession runs for longer than the working life of most of the vessels it has been drawn for. Whoever eventually berths here will arrive under a decision taken in Athens on a Thursday in autumn 2025, on a split vote, some years before the first mooring line was thrown.
Who is this for
The marina will suit an owner or captain of a large yacht who wants a home port in the Ionian, with full services ashore. It is drawn as a basin of finger piers inside a new outer breakwater, beside the existing quays of the port. Pedestrian walkways will run around it, and the marina will be linked with other ports in Greece and abroad.
