Geneva is a charming little city beset by water on all sides. The lake ends where the city begins, and so you get the lake and two rivers. The lake has its charms, but I prefer river swimming. Here's where to dip your dogs when the snow starts melting.
A concrete jetty extending 200 metres into the lake, a small beach, a diving board, sunbeds, a sauna open year-round, and a café. Two francs fifty to get in. There's a reason this is the first place anyone mentions when you ask about swimming in Geneva — it works. It has the energy of a city beach without being overwhelming.
Best times: 7am on a weekday (empty, lake flat, Mont Blanc visible if you're lucky) or late afternoon when the light hits the water right. Saturday in August at noon: busy but never unpleasant.
The sauna runs all year. Going in winter — into the sauna, out into the cold lake, back into the sauna — is one of the better things you can do in Geneva on a grey February day. Bring a friend. The cold lake in February is genuinely shocking in a way you will remember.
Walk along the river path from Plainpalais toward the point where the Rhône and Arve collide. As you go you'll pass a handful of entry points — stone steps, low walls, spots where people have been lowering themselves in for decades. Each is slightly different: more current, less, shallower or deeper. Take your pick, or go all the way to the end.
At the tip of the peninsula, where the two rivers actually meet, there's a small bar. Can get a little grungy — nobody's maintaining it like a proper bains — but it has energy and the teal-green Rhône water is striking, especially when you can see the colour contrast between the two rivers meeting. A very Geneva afternoon.
This is my favourite place to submerge in water in all of Geneva. The Rhône here moves fast — fast enough that the water stays clear and cold even in high summer. It's deep right from the bank, so you step off the edge and go straight in over your head. No shallow shuffling required.
What makes it: there's a bar. You swim, you climb out, you finish your beer. That's the whole thing. Low-key the best swimming hole in the city, and somehow still not overrun. The current demands a bit of respect — don't go in drunk, and swim across it rather than against it — but handled sensibly it's a good swim and deeply satisfying.
Across the French border and along the lake road — a proper plage with a pebble shore, clear water, picnic spots under the trees, and the easy pace of small-town French lakeside life. Calmer than anything in Geneva, a fraction of the crowd, and France means France prices at the café.
Good with kids: the water is shallow for a long way out and the pebble beach is easy. Take a picnic, stay until it cools down, drive back.
Twenty minutes along the lakeside — a small medieval village with old stone lanes, a couple of restaurants on the water, and direct lake access from the rocks beside the fishing dock. One of the most intact old villages in the Geneva canton, and the fishing operation is genuinely still running, which gives the whole place a feel that most lakeside spots in Switzerland have long since lost.
Have lunch at the restaurant on the water, swim off the rocks after, take the bus home. A complete afternoon. Don't rush it.
Every tip on HoodTip has a real person's name attached. If you've found a good Geneva swimming spot that's not on this list, it belongs here.