Updated

On Sunday, 13 September 2026, the Indonesian passenger ferry Virgo Transport 8 capsized in heavy weather in the Java Sea while sailing from Surabaya in East Java to Banjarmasin in South Kalimantan on Borneo. The vessel was carrying 243 passengers and crew when its captain reported the ship listing amid rough seas with waves of up to three metres and issued a distress call; contact was lost at about 2 a.m., and roughly two hours later authorities were told the ferry had overturned. By an evening update from the national search and rescue agency BASARNAS, at least 108 people had been evacuated alive, six bodies had been recovered and about 129 people remained unaccounted for. Ships, helicopters and rescue teams expanded the search around the vessel's last known position, while hundreds of relatives gathered at a command centre at Banjarmasin's Trisakti port to check passenger manifests and rescue lists. Indonesia's transport minister, Dudy Purwagandhi, told reporters in Banjarmasin that officials could not yet determine whether victims remained inside the hull or had drifted away from the wreck, and the Directorate General of Sea Transportation said the cause — natural, technical or human — was still under investigation. Survivors described the ferry as crowded, with passengers sleeping in hallways, and speculated that vehicles loaded on one side may have affected its balance. The disaster renewed scrutiny of maritime safety enforcement in Indonesia, an archipelago of more than 17,000 islands where ferries are a primary means of travel and accidents occur frequently.