I’ve sailed four of the five ships in Celebrity’s Edge class, Edge, Apex, Beyond, and Ascent, and the honest answer is that they don’t split evenly into two pairs the way I expected going in. Edge and Apex look nearly identical on paper, and Beyond and Ascent do too, but the actual differences land in tiers, and the newest ship in the class, Celebrity Xcel, pushes things even further than the first four.
Edge stands alone on one specific point
Edge and Apex share the same hull, the same overall layout, and most of the same venues. But there’s one real difference between them that I didn’t expect, the bar next to the casino. On Edge, that space has a genuine sports-bar feel, slot machines along one wall, TVs tuned to games, and it’s a legitimately popular spot on NFL Sundays. Apex replaced that entirely.
Apex, Beyond, and Ascent share Craft Social
Starting with Apex, that casino-adjacent space became Craft Social, a craft beer and cocktail lounge with a more upscale, gastropub feel, still with screens for watching games, but a real step up from Edge’s more straightforward sports-bar setup. Craft Social carried over to both Beyond and Ascent as well, so if you’ve sailed any of the three newer ships, you’ve already seen it. Edge is the outlier here, not Apex.
Where Beyond and Ascent actually pull ahead
This is where the real generational jump happens. Beyond and Ascent are roughly 66 to 69 feet longer than Edge and Apex, with a full extra passenger deck, and that added length went straight into expanding the spaces that already worked. The Sunset Bar, a genuinely small space on Edge and Apex, comes in at nearly double the size on Beyond and Ascent, with new elevated wings and covered nooks that make it feel like a completely different venue rather than a resized version of the original. The Retreat’s private sundeck grew by roughly 40%, and the Rooftop Garden picked up about 20% more space along with new floating pools cantilevered over the side of the ship.
Two entirely new venues also debuted with Beyond, Le Voyage by Daniel Boulud, a specialty restaurant with an unusual cocoon-style seating design, and the World Class Bar, making its first appearance on an Edge-class ship after starting out on Celebrity’s Solstice-class vessels. Both carried over to Ascent as well. Neither exists on Edge or Apex at all, they’re genuinely new venues added into the extra space rather than expanded versions of something already there.
Xcel goes further still, Eden is gone entirely
I haven’t sailed Celebrity Xcel myself, it’s the newest ship in the class, launched in late 2025, but the change there is significant enough to be worth covering. Xcel is built on the same larger Beyond and Ascent hull, but it replaces Eden, the multi-deck dining and entertainment space that’s been a signature feature on every other Edge-class ship, with an entirely different concept called The Bazaar. Where Eden leaned abstract and artistic, The Bazaar is built around rotating destination themes, an artisan market, live entertainment, and food that changes with the region the ship is sailing, Caribbean one season, Mediterranean the next.
Inside The Bazaar, Mosaic replaces Eden Restaurant as the specialty dining option, and Spice Cafe replaces the more casual Eden Cafe, alongside a brand-new alfresco venue called Bora that didn’t exist in any form on the earlier ships. My mom sailed Xcel, and by all accounts she loved it, she especially enjoyed the themed cuisine at The Bazaar, which rotates based on where the ship is sailing, Caribbean dishes one season, Mediterranean the next. Not every review has been glowing, some early coverage has pointed out that Mosaic’s menu doesn’t rotate port to port the way the marketing implies, and that losing Eden’s more artistic identity is a genuine trade-off, not a pure upgrade. It’s a bigger swing than anything between Edge and Ascent, replacing a signature venue entirely rather than expanding it.
What’s coming next for the class
Celebrity isn’t done with this design either. Celebrity Xcite, the sixth ship in the Edge class, is already under construction at the same French shipyard that built the other five, with an expected debut in 2028. Full details haven’t been released, but it’s expected to carry over Xcel’s larger hull and the same outward-facing layout that’s defined the whole class since Edge launched, and Celebrity’s own leadership has hinted at a new Italian dining concept possibly making its way onto the ship. The class keeps evolving one ship at a time rather than staying static.
What this actually means if you’re choosing
If you’re deciding between an older Edge-class sailing and a newer one, the honest takeaway is that Edge and Apex are still excellent ships and deliver the full Edge-class experience, the core concept doesn’t change. Beyond and Ascent add genuinely more square footage to the venues people spend their evenings in, I covered Beyond’s layout in more depth here, and the Sunset Bar in particular is a different experience entirely once you’ve seen the larger version. Xcel is a different decision altogether, it’s not just a bigger version of the same ship, it’s Celebrity testing whether a genuinely new concept can replace a proven one, and with Xcite already on the way, it clearly won’t be the last word on where this class goes. If the choice comes down to price and those specific spaces don’t matter much to you, Edge and Apex hold up fine. If you want to see where the class is headed next, Xcel is the one actually taking the risk right now.
