Bermuda will welcome its first cruise ships of 2018 on Sunday.

It will be the inaugural visit for the Bermuda-registered Queen Elizabeth.

The luxury liner, which carries 1,900 passengers and 980 crew, is Cunard’s newest cruise ship and will be joined by sister ship, Queen Victoria. Both will berth in Dockyard for a 7½-hour stay.

Queen Elizabeth, which has just started an 122-night world tour, left Southampton, England, on Sunday.

As part of its annual Around the World voyage, the ship will travel through the Panama Canal before returning to Southampton in May.

The voyage also includes overnight stays in New York, San Francisco, Sydney, Hong Kong and Cape Town.

It involves visits to 39 ports in 25 countries, including the maiden voyages to Bermuda and a handful of other destinations.

The ship, launched in 2010, will only be in port at Heritage Wharf in the West End from 8am to 3.30pm.

Queen Victoria will berth at King’s Wharf, although the two ships will be brought alongside, and taken out 20 minutes apart.

Passengers will reboard at about 2pm for the departures — Queen Elizabeth to New York and Queen Victoria to Fort Lauderdale.

Christened by the Queen after being built in Italy in 2010, the originally British-flagged Queen Elizabeth, with more than a thousand luxury cabins, was refurbished in 2016.