City launches Cape Town Beach Alerts, your new pocket-source for coastal water quality, beach info

City launches Cape Town Beach Alerts, your new pocket-source for coastal water quality, beach info

22 September 2026

The City of Cape Town is launching a brand-new pocket-source for reliable and relevant information about Cape Town’s beaches today. Cape Town Beach Alerts – https://beachalerts.capetown.gov.za – provides the latest and long-term coastal water quality results for all beaches and tidal pools along the Atlantic and False Bay coastlines in a simple and easy-to-digest format. The webpage includes coastal and environmental alerts and warnings, information about lifeguard services, the weather forecast for each beach, and much more.

Watch the video demonstration here.

The City of Cape Town has the most extensive and transparent coastal water quality sampling regime of any coastal city in South Africa. 

Now we are presenting Cape Town Beach Alerts: the new webpage that will transform the way locals and visitors can get the latest information about the coastal water quality results at their favourite beach destination, and all other information that matters. The webpage is easy to navigate and provides information in colour-coded format and simple language, with a map and pins that indicate the locations. 

  • Go to the Beach Alerts app and try it out
  • It is also available free on your mobile phone via the City of Cape Town APP, just download the latest version when the APP store prompts you to do so
  • Register on the City of Cape Town APP to receive push notifications about environmental and pollution alerts


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The search-function makes it easy to find the results for the beach or tidal pool you want to visit, and you have a choice about the preferred format: the latest coastal water quality result for the past week, or the long-term result for the 365-day rolling period. The results are colour-coded, meaning the colour indicates whether a result is within the recreational guidelines (green), represents two consecutive failures (red), or represents a single failure (amber). 

Cape Town Beach Alerts is available 24/7 and provides a wealth of information about every beach and tidal pool the City monitors along the Atlantic and False Bay coastline:

  • The date and result of the latest water quality sample at the specific beach; and whether the result meets the National Guidelines for recreational use
  • The specific location where seawater samples are collected for a particular beach
  • The number of samples taken over the past 365 days
  • The number of samples that are within the National Guidelines for recreational activities
  • The date of the last failed result
  • A table with the dates and results of the last eight samples taken at the beach or tidal pool; and whether these met the National Guidelines for recreational use
  • The long-term classification of the beach: Summer (October to March); 365-day rolling period; and the past five years
  • The water testing protocol – in other words, how often the beach or tidal pool’s water is tested
  • Whether there are any active alerts for this beach
  • Today’s weather, and the three-day forecast, including wind strength and direction
  • Whether lifeguard services are provided in season, and if so, the schedule
  • Whether the beach is a Blue Flag beach in season
  • More information about water quality guidelines and answers to frequently asked questions
  • Tutorials about natural coastal phenomena and other interesting info about our marine environment

‘Cape Town Beach Alerts makes complicated data about coastal water quality accessible to the public. We want the Cape Town Beach Alerts webpage to become the go-to source for Capetonians and visitors for all beach related information. This is only the first phase of the webpage, we will add much more in the future development of the site and include things like information about dog walking, upgrades along our coast, sightings of oceanic life, and so forth. 


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‘Another great feature is that users can sign up for push-notifications through the City’s APP. This is the ideal way of staying up to date with all the latest alerts and warnings the City may issue about an incident or event impacting a beach or tidal pool such as a large puffer fish washout, presence of a rabid seal, a sewage spill that may impact a beach, and presence of a beached whale. 

‘I’m sure you will find this a helpful source and appreciate the excellent timing with Summer on our doorstep. I’m proud of this latest effort in making our coastal water quality data even more transparent, reliable, and easy to interpret to the thousands of people who visit our coast every year,’ said the City’s Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, Alderman Eddie Andrews 

  • Cape Town has a dedicated team whose full-time job is to travel the entire 300+km of our coastline – every week – to collect water samples at over 100 locations for analysis
  • The coastal water quality is based on enterococci counts, the internationally recognised gold standard indicator for coastal water quality in terms of associated risk to human health
  • All water samples undergo independent analysis conducted by a laboratory that is SANAS accredited for microbiological analysis for sea water 

‘Go to https://beachalerts.capetown.gov.za. Please save the link, share it, and use it for reliable and relevant beach information in your pocket!’ said Alderman Andrews. 

Caption: Cape Town Beach Alerts is a new pocket-source for reliable and relevant information about beaches and tidal pools in Cape Town, from the latest coastal water quality results to general coastal alerts and warnings, the weather and lifeguard services. Alderman Eddie Andrews, the City’s Deputy Mayor and Mayoral Committee Member for Spatial Planning and Environment, and Councillor Izabel Sherry, the local Ward Councillor, used the webpage to look up the water quality for the St James tidal pool in the Far South, before they enjoyed a plunge.

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