How to avoid big cruise ships in ports...

No, you need to check each port site.

• Geiranger: https://www.stranda-hamnevesen.no/cruise-calls/
• Ålesund: https://alesund.havn.no/skipstrafikk/cruiseanlop/
• Bergen: https://www.bergenhavn.no/anlopsliste

Not sure if you are planning on Flam at all, but that is one place that is heavily affected by the cruise ships. We were there once when it was empty and it was bliss, and then again this summer when there were two and it was horrendous.

https://www.cruisetimetables.com/flamnorwayschedule-jun2025.html#google_vignette

OMG Badger! That is perfect! Thank you thank you!

We will have 3-4 nights in Norway mid-to-end Sept '25 and I am trying to avoid the big boats as much as possible. No rental car, getting about on the public transits. Amazing how many lodgings are already booked full, feeling the need to get things reserved pretty quickly.

Thank you Mikliz97- Have the cruise free-dates for Flam listed now!

You will not have too many large cruise ships operating end of September; less than in main season months.

Here are some sites I know of. They're not perfect. As for easy and concise, you can judge that for yourself.

• cruisetimetables.com
• cruisedig.com
• www.cruisemapper.com

Note that these sites are coming from the point of view of promoting the industry, not helping folks avoid the impact of it, so take it with a grain of salt. These sites may be somewhat helpful in managing your expectations, since they do show some (most?) of the ships, and might be good enough to give you a general sense of which days may be more/less busy, but IME they don't show all of them. So not awesome, but better than nothing. Personally, I'd prefer some sort of "heat map" that showed real quantitative data at a glance, so one could immediately get a sense of how many people to expect on any given day, but I've found nothing like that (if anyone knows of such a tool, I'd love to know about it - or please, someone create this). No way to make money off such a tool so I don't expect such a thing to be developed.

For a previous trip to Malta (which gets a LOT of cruise ships), I threw together this calendar of expected cruise ship passenger impact. It was helpful, but far from perfect (contrary to the data I pulled from the above sites, there were no days when there were zero ships in port, there were often several more ships in port than the websites predicted).

Hope some of that helps. Good luck.

While there were ships in Alesund when we were there, it wasn't an issue for us. In Geiranger we stayed up the hill at Hole Hytteutleige where the view was amazing, and we were above most of the cruisers. We stayed at
Vangsgaarden Gjestgiveri in Aurland and watched the cruise ships go by as they left Flam. Ship in port or not, I would always choose Aurland over Flam.

I don't know how quick and easy this is, but if you go to the Celebrity Cruises site and search for Norway cruises, you can see what their schedule is, specifically: The Apex will be in Bergen and Alesund during the week of August 15-22, 2026! Believe me, ImaFarmer, I avoid exploring a port with a herd, and this will only be my second cruise, but since my husband and I are in our 70's this is the only way we can visit these fabulous places. We genuinely strive to bust the typical cruise stereotype! But, that's not to say that I won't be reading the other replies, so I can avoid ports where cruise ships will be in port. I'm apprehensive about the fact that my beautiful little city in Portugal may soon become a popular cruise ship port...

Thank you everyone- after all that, I decided we will actually skip Bergen and Alesund and will focus on a 2-day rental car exploration around the Sognefjord, with no big boats in Flam- lol... Will stay in Aurland a couple nights and see the sights on our own to end our holiday.