Coastal waters
Around 88% of EU coastal bathing waters were classified excellent in 2025.
Search official bathing-water classifications across Europe. Compare beaches, lakes and rivers, explore quality history, and always jump to the national authority for current local warnings.

Praia do Tonel between rocky cliffs, seen from the Sagres fortress, Algarve · Photo: Norbert Nagel, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Results use the latest EEA annual classification available on this site. Your browser can also calculate distance from your location without sending your coordinates to our server.
Location is optional and processed locally in your browser. “Nearest” is cross-border; choose a Country to keep results inside one country.
Around 88% of EU coastal bathing waters were classified excellent in 2025.
Around 78% of EU inland bathing waters were classified excellent in 2025.
A small but important share remained poor, which is why the annual class and current local notice both matter.
The EEA class is valuable context, but it is only step one. Use this three-step check before relying on any beach, lake or river result.
Use Excellent, Good, Sufficient or Poor to understand the site's monitored microbiological history.
Open the national bathing-water profile or local authority notice for temporary pollution, closures and alerts.
Check signs, lifeguard instructions, weather, currents and visible local conditions before entering the water.
Country pages are generated from the same official EEA dataset and include totals, quality mix and direct links to individual bathing sites.
Every official bathing water on well-known islands, coasts and lakes, grouped by area with Poor ratings and long-term records. Compare all destinations →
Mallorca113 sites · 68.1% Excellent
Menorca30 sites · 80% Excellent
Ibiza & Formentera48 sites · 66.7% Excellent
Costa Brava86 sites · 94.2% Excellent
Algarve coast106 sites · 93.4% Excellent
French Riviera (Alpes-Maritimes)151 sites · 63.6% Excellent
Corsica223 sites · 75.8% Excellent
Sardinia664 sites · 96.8% Excellent
Lake Garda128 sites · 99.2% ExcellentIstria (Croatia)217 sites · 95.9% Excellent
Crete177 sites · 98.9% Excellent
Rhodes52 sites · 75% Excellent
Corfu66 sites · 100% ExcellentHalkidiki90 sites · 98.9% Excellent
Lake Balaton148 sites · 85.1% ExcellentStart with official classifications, then narrow the question: what is near a city, how does a country compare, or what does the rating actually mean?
Browse 50+ major European city guides with nearby official bathing waters ordered by straight-line distance.
Explore city guides →Learn what Excellent, Good, Sufficient and Poor mean — and why annual quality is not a live safety signal.
Read the guides →Explore country coverage, Excellent shares and examples with consistently Excellent recent classification history.
Open rankings →See up to eleven seasons of classifications where the official dataset contains them.
Each detail page identifies EEA as the dataset source and links to the national bathing-water profile when the official record provides one.
The site never turns a 2025 classification into a claim that water is safe today. Current warnings belong to national and local authorities.
BathingWaterFinder is an independent service. It reuses EEA bathing-water data with attribution and presents it in a consumer-friendly search format. Classifications are based on microbiological quality under the Bathing Water Directive. They do not cover every possible hazard, pollutant, algae event, weather event or temporary local closure.