Riva has spent most of its history building fast, beautiful runabouts and open sportboats — the sort of varnished mahogany and chrome that reads as Italian glamour on any dock. The 54Metri is none of that. At 54.83 metres it is the largest yacht the yard has ever built, and its first hull, Sairu, went on the water this summer as the first of a new flagship line.
The boat was presented on 26 June 2026 at the Riva Superyacht Division yard in Ancona, part of the Ferretti Group. It is not a one-off. Two more 54Metri hulls are slated for 2026 and 2027, and the series is already selling ahead of build.
The biggest Riva ever
For a brand roughly 180 years old, that is a real line to cross. Riva has grown its yachts steadily over the past two decades, but the 54Metri is a different order of size — a full megayacht, laid out across four decks connected by a central lift.
The hull is aluminium, and the layout leans hard into the amenities buyers now expect at this length: four fold-down balconies that open the interior to the sea, a beach club with a 5 m pool, and a lounge area up on the foredeck. This is Riva chasing the megayacht feature set rather than simply scaling up an older idea.
Built light on purpose
The most telling number on the spec sheet is one that most buyers never notice: gross tonnage. The 54Metri comes in at under 500 GT, and that is a deliberate choice rather than an accident of the design.
Staying below the 500 GT threshold keeps the yacht in a lighter regulatory regime — fewer crew and safety requirements than a heavier vessel of similar length carries. Riva has drawn a 54.83-metre hull and then kept its volume in check to land on the friendlier side of that line. It is a class play as much as a design one.
The Riva look at three times the length
The exterior and interior come from Officina Italiana Design — Mauro Micheli and Sergio Beretta, the studio that has been Riva's exclusive designer for 30 years. They worked alongside the Ferretti Group Product Strategy Committee and the group's own engineering department.
That continuity matters. Rather than hand its largest project to an outside megayacht studio, Riva kept the pencil in-house and asked the same team to translate its signature look onto a hull roughly three times the length of the runabouts that made the name. The result is meant to still read as a Riva at a glance.
Life aboard
The 54Metri sleeps ten guests — an owner's suite plus four guest cabins — with a crew of eleven housed in six cabins. The proportion tells you what kind of boat this is: a fully staffed private yacht built for long stays, not weekend hops.
Navigation and connectivity are specified to match. The bridge carries dual X-band radar and ECDIS, and the yacht is fitted for both 5G and Starlink, so guests stay online well offshore.
What moves her
Two MTU 12V2000 M96L diesels, each rated at 1,432 kW, push the 54Metri to a top speed of 18 knots. Throttled back to 11 knots she has a range of about 3,600 nautical miles — enough to cross an ocean at a relaxed cruising pace.
With the 54Metri, Riva stops being a builder of beautiful small boats that occasionally goes bigger. This is a genuine megayacht brand now, with a flagship range, a beach-club pool, and the same in-house look it has carried for decades, stretched to nearly 55 metres.
Photo: Riva / Ferretti Group (press).
