Riverside Luxury Cruises has put its 2028 river cruise season on sale, and the headline news is a new ship. The Riverside Mahler launches in May 2028 and will be the line's second vessel on the Rhine-Danube corridor, where demand is clearly growing fast.
The Mahler's first season splits neatly into chapters. Through summer it sails between Amsterdam and Basel, linking Germany, Austria and Hungary with the two river hubs. In September it heads for the Lower Danube, returns to the Rhine in October, then wraps up its debut year with Christmas market sailings on the Danube.
The expanded Rhine-Danube programme is the quiet story here. Sailings through the Main-Danube Canal, which stitches the two great rivers together, jump from just two departures in 2027 to twelve in 2028 — a sign the line expects serious appetite for longer, multi-country river trips.
The rest of the fleet keeps busy too. The Debussy opens the year in March with spring tulip cruises through the Netherlands and Belgium, then pushes into the Lower Danube. Early summer brings new nine- and 10-night Amsterdam–Basel routes that include the Moselle, one of the Rhine's prettiest tributaries. Summer and autumn run a mix of Dutch Waterways and Rhine itineraries, ending with Rhine Christmas market cruises.
The Mozart stays on the Danube — both Upper and Lower stretches — with a new seven-night Vienna-to-Budapest itinerary through the Wachau Valley, plus a new Hungarian port added to its schedule. The Ravel continues on France's Rhône and Saône.
Trips range from three-night hops to a 23-night marathon, running from early spring to the end of December, and Riverside is adding expert-led theme cruises to the mix. Book any 2028 sailing before 30 June 2027 and you get 18 percent off, across all suite categories and packages — a decent window for early planners who like a fixed price on a far-off trip.
For travellers, this is worth a look if you want small-ship river cruising with real variety: wine regions, tulip season, Christmas markets and two-river mega-itineraries all sit within one season. Booking more than a year out feels like a leap, but the 18 percent discount softens that, and the 2028 additions — especially the new Mahler and the Moselle itineraries — are the kind of routes that tend to fill first.
