Mallorca's beaches by water quality: each beach's record since 1990

Of Mallorca's 87 beaches with an official sampling point, 18 have had their water graded excellent in every season since 1990, Es Trenc and Formentor among them. In 2025, the grade poor went to 3 points on 2 beaches: D’Albercuix Port de Pollenca and Cala Egos. The grade is about bacteria in the water, not sand, crowds or views. It shows where the water has stayed clean for years, not which beach is the prettiest.

Excellent is common here, but not the rule it is on most of Spain's coast. In 2025, 91 % of Spain's sampling points were graded excellent; on Mallorca it was 77 of 113, or 68 %. Split Spain's coast into provinces, islands and the cities of Melilla and Ceuta, and you get 31 areas. Only 2 have a lower share: Bizkaia and «Ibiza and Formentera».

What the grade measures

The European Environment Agency publishes a grade for every official bathing point in the EU: excellent, good, sufficient or poor. It comes from water samples tested for two kinds of gut bacteria, intestinal enterococci and E. coli. The grade for a season uses that season's samples and those of the three seasons before it. So it moves slowly, and one bad day does not change it. The EU directive.

Poor is a warning, not a shade of grey. When a point is graded poor, the authorities are expected to act, for example by banning bathing or advising against it, and to tell the public. The agency on poor water.

A beach and a sampling point are not the same thing. Long beaches are sampled in several places: Playa de Palma has 6 points. Mallorca's 113 points belong to 87 beaches, and below, a beach with several points is only as good as its weakest one. Majorca, the older English spelling, is the same island.

Excellent in every season since 1990

In all 36 seasons, 18 beaches have been graded excellent at every point: Cala Agulla, Cala Anguila, Cala Bona, Cala Mandia, Cala Mesquida, Cala Santanyi, Canyamel, Colonia Sant Pere, Es Dolc, Es Ribell, Es Trenc, Formentor, Porto Colom, S’Estany d’en Mas Cala Romantica, Sa Coma, Sa Rapita, Sant Elm and Son Baulo.

Another 6 beaches have an almost clean record since 1990: everything below excellent came in the first few seasons. The year their unbroken excellent run began: Aucanada, 1991; Marina, 1991; Tor, 1991; Playa de Muro, 1992; Cala Barques Cala Sant Vicenc, 1993; Port Vell, 1995.

Another 18 beaches have never had a lower grade either, but their record starts later. For Cala Blava and S’Estanyol it goes back to 1991; for Cala Galiota and Playa del Port, only to 2022. More on short records below.

Where the water was poor in 2025

The lowest grade went to 3 points on 2 beaches. Neither is a one-summer accident: each has been graded poor before.

• D’Albercuix Port de Pollenca: 2 of its 3 points were graded poor in 2025. Point 2: poor in 3 seasons (2001, 2024–2025). Point 3: poor in 12 seasons (1999, 2002–2003, 2005–2007, 2009, 2011–2013, 2024–2025), no grade in 2008. The nearest other sampled beach is Playa dels Tamarells Port de Pollenca, 0.6 km away.
• Cala Egos: its only point was graded poor in 2025. In all, poor in 8 seasons (2003, 2015–2018, 2023–2025), no grade in 2009, 2019–2022. The nearest other sampled beach is Cala d’Or, 1.2 km away.

A gap in the record is not a clean season. If a point was not graded, we do not know what the water was like, and an excellent run stops there.

Pollença, one of our three towns on the island, shows how the water changes within one municipality. Of the 7 points with Port de Pollenca in their name, none was graded excellent in 2025. The other 3 points in the municipality, Formentor, Cala Molins Cala Sant Vicenc and Cala Barques Cala Sant Vicenc, were all excellent.

Since 1990, 20 of the island's beaches have been graded poor at least once, and for 11 of them the last time was before 2000. The most recent cases apart from the ones above: Palmira in 2017, Magaluf in 2013, Port de Soller in 2008, Son Moll in 2008.

Where excellent slipped

The island's share of excellent has not stood still. In 2021, 96 of 110 graded points were excellent; in 2022, 82 of 112. It has not returned to the earlier level since: 77 of 113 in 2025.

Points by grade in each season, counting every point on the island graded that season. The table starts in 2016: the agency treats 2010–2015 as transitional, and before that the old rules applied.

The data does not say why: a grade reports what was found in the samples, not where it came from. It does show where. These 3 points lost a run of 25 or more excellent seasons:

• Playa de Palma, point 5: excellent for 32 seasons in a row until 2021, good in 2025.
• Llenaireport de Pollenca: excellent for 31 seasons in a row until 2021, good in 2025.
• Cala d’Or: excellent for 30 seasons in a row until 2021, good in 2025.

Short records

Testing began recently at 5 beaches, which have fewer than 10 graded seasons: Playa de s’Illot since 2021, now excellent; Porto Cristo since 2021, now good; Son Maties since 2021, now good; Cala Galiota since 2022, now excellent; Playa del Port since 2022, now excellent. An excellent record of 4–5 seasons says less than one of 36: in so few years a bad one may simply not have come up.

Never graded excellent: S’Arenal (graded since 2012, 14 seasons) and Porto Cristo (graded since 2021, 5 seasons).

Palma's beaches, point by point

Palma de Mallorca has 13 sampling points on 5 beaches, and 9 of them were excellent in 2025. Playa de Palma alone has 6 points, and they do not agree: excellent at points 1, 3, 4 and 7; good at point 5; sufficient at point 6. Its two outermost points are 4 km apart.

The sea by month, and the winter, in our towns

Our base has 3 places on the island. Sea temperature is the 2015–2024 average for each month from NOAA satellite data, on a grid of about 25 km. A cell that size mixes the shore with open sea and does not see a single bay. Primary source.

The sea is at 20 °C or warmer for 6 months a year at Palma de Mallorca, and 5 months a year at Alcúdia and Pollença. How that compares with the rest of the coast is in our piece on the swimming season.

In winter our three towns on the island part ways. By monthly social security data for 2025, this is the share of cafés, hotels and shops still operating in January, against the summer peak:

• Palma de Mallorca: 91 %, winter score 5 of 5.
• Alcúdia: 44 %, winter score 1 of 5.
• Pollença: 52 %, winter score 2 of 5.

How the share is counted, and what it is for every place in our base: the winter openness dataset.

Mallorca and the other Balearic islands

The three Balearic areas in 2025, counted the same way: points, points graded excellent, points graded poor, and beaches graded excellent in every season since 1990.

The three island capitals in our base, for anyone choosing where to live rather than only where to swim:

• Palma de Mallorca: sea at 20 °C or warmer for 6 months a year, 91 % of the summer peak open in January.
• Maó / Mahón: sea at 20 °C or warmer for 5 months a year, 70 % of the summer peak open in January.
• Ibiza (Eivissa): sea at 20 °C or warmer for 5 months a year, 63 % of the summer peak open in January.

All 87 beaches

Longest excellent run across all points first, then by the 2025 grade. «All 36» means excellent in every season since the first grade.

Beach names are as in the agency's register: with the generic «Playa», without accents and sometimes run together, so Santanyi rather than Santanyí, as the register of municipalities spells it. In the text, «Playa» is dropped where the name reads without it. For a beach with several points, the excellent run is the one all its points share; a season without a grade ends it. A grade describes a sampling point, not a whole shoreline. This is an observation, not advice on where to swim.

Further

Our three places on the island, with full data, are on the Mallorca coast page, and one by one: Palma de Mallorca, Alcúdia, Pollença. Bathing water for every place in our base is in our dataset, the sea by month in the sea temperature dataset.

Why Mallorca and Majorca are the same island, and how it lives in winter: our piece on the name.

Read next

Mallorca or Menorca: winter, jobs, rent and prices, measured

Best time to visit Mallorca: weather, sea, the price of a hotel night and how much of the island is open, month by month

Where are the Balearic Islands? Mallorca, Menorca, Ibiza and Formentera