The shipping industry needs to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and other pollutants. In order to achieve this reduction, the shipping industry will be faced with stricter regulations that are currently unclear. The lifetime of a ship is about 25 years. As a result, it can be interesting to already take a possible refit to an alternative fuel into account, when designing a new ship. This study investigates which aspects of the ship’s design can be prepared for a refit to an alternative fuel, regarding a general cargo ship that starts sailing on LSFO and MGO. Due to the uncertainty in the future regulations, two possible scenarios are described. These scenarios are based on current regulations, known future regulations, the goals of the International Maritime Organization (IMO) greenhouse gas (GHG) strategy and a well-to-tank (WTT) analysis. The first scenario allows carbon-neutral fuels and the second scenario only allows carbon-free fuels. Hereafter, different fuels are identified to be applicable in these scenario’s. Then the most relevant aspects of the fuels that have an impact on the design of a ship are identified. These are the way the fuel should be stored, the volumetric and gravimetric energy density of the fuel, including the system and finally the applicability of the International Code of Safety for Ships using Gases or other Low-Flashpoint Fuels (IGF code). Based on these aspects, the fuels are compared with each other and a qualitative matrix is formed which shows how difficult it is to refit a ship from one fuel to another. The three most promising fuel refits are selected for a further conceptual design. The most manageable fuel switch in the carbon-neutral scenario is a switch towards hydrotreated vegetable oil (HVO), and the easiest in the carbon-free scenario is a switch to ammonia. Methanol is also selected, because, in the carbon-neutral scenario, it is relatively easy to refit to, and in terms of emissions, it does better than HVO. To evaluate the possible design options for an easier refit, a reference ship is used as a starting point. The properties of this ship are also used to define the starting requirements for sailing on LSFO and MGO. Subsequently, a design spiral is used to adjust the design of the reference ship, to prepare it as far as possible for the selected refits. It has been concluded that it is relatively easy to prepare the ship sailing on LSFO and MGO for HVO. Due to the lower energy density of HVO, it is recommended to decrease the sailing range after the refit, so that no further adjustments have to be made to the design of the ship. The ship’s range will be reduced by 8.6%. Because the ship has overcapacity, this has no impact on the sailing profile. For methanol, cofferdams could already be placed in relevant tanks. Double pipes can be laid to these tanks or a double duct can be installed. Unlike MGO and LSFO, methanol can be stored in double bottom ballast water tanks, so for example, cofferdams can also be placed in ballast water tanks. By preparing the ship, space will be lost due to the preparations, in order to meet the initial requirements, the ship must be 2.3 [m] longer. If there is refit in the future, the ship will not yet meet the requirements for methanol. In order to meet the refit requirements, the ship will have to surrender 40% of its range. Furthermore, 1.4% of the cargo capacity will have to be surrendered. It was concluded that, starting from LSFO and MGO, there was no point in preparing the ship for ammonia, because there are too many differences between the fuels. It could be interesting to build a ship for LNG in the coming years and then see if it can be prepared in the design for a refit to ammonia or hydrogen.