Swim on in 2025

What has 2025 got in store for outdoor swimming? Rowan Clarke finds out

In the middle of January gloom, cold water is a salvation. The tingle, the buzz, the afterglow and the warm-hearted, brightly coloured community bring joy at the darkest times. So does looking forward to a swimming year ahead. Packed with events, challenges, travel, culture and opportunities, there are plenty of reasons to be excited. Yet, concern about our climate and water quality is a constant undercurrent. So, how will we navigate outdoor swimming in 2025?

Events and challenges

With the Cold Water Swimming Championships in London coming up (25 Jan), swimming events are on our minds. Events mark a rhythm for each outdoor swimming year – cold water and ice galas flow into distance and location-based races and challenges with a high summer swim festival peak.

Beyond physical challenges, these events are true celebrations of outdoor swimming – the sport, its communities, venues and locations. For many of us, events offer safe, supported opportunities to swim in ways we haven’t before, raise money for charity and achieve something extraordinary.

“The Bantham Boomerang and the Mini- Swoosh are huge highlights for me,” says the swimming charity Level Water’s CEO, Ian Thwaites. “The Mini-Swoosh is for kids, and we have a bunch of Level Water kids who come and join us. Seeing them take to the outdoors for the first time – and finish on the same beach as the fundraisers who are supporting them – really brings the whole joy of swimming together in a moment of magic. There will be tears.”

As the Outdoor Swimmer team decides which challenges to sign up for, we’ve been busy updating our event listings. What’s striking is the sheer range of events and how that reflects the many ways in which we enjoy immersing ourselves in cold water.

“I’m looking forward to going to Swim Serpentine with the Outdoor Swimmer team and hoping to take part,” says our Commercial Director, Yvonne Turner. “It’s been a while for me as I’ve been dipping for the last few years and doing lots of walking challenges.”

In addition to traditional swimming events like Swim Serpentine, the Great North Swim and Dart 10k, there is a whole range of events that combine outdoor swimming with a festival vibe. In addition to Level Water’s 24-Hour Relays, we’re dusting off our camping gear ready for the Henley Swim Festival, Something Wild Festival and Keswick Mountain Festival.

Endurance

Alongside mass participation events, the outdoor swimming calendar is also marked by endurance challenges. Last year, outdoor swimmers like Neil Agius, Sam Farrow and Iris Ashman achieved incredible endurance swims. There was also an English Channel relay swim last January, demonstrating a stretching of the seasons that we expect to continue this year with a milder winter meaning that endurance swims will happen earlier and later in 2025.

As endurance swimmers mix cold water swims with pool-based training in preparation for their 2025 challenge, we look forward to cheering them on.

“I’m looking forward to Sam Farrow’s Windermere challenge, which she announced at the Outdoor Swimming Session in November,” says Jenny Rice from Kendal Mountain Festival. In July, Sam, who swam the fastest-ever Lake Geneva length (72.8km) in 22 hours and 48 minutes in September, plans to swim as many lengths of Windermere as she can in one continuous swim.

At the time of writing, most of our favourite endurance swimming heroes are keeping their 2025 challenges under wraps. We’ll be watching out for Amy Ennion (who’s hinted that she’ll be taking on Loch Ness), Andy Donaldson, Sarah Thomas and Jaimie Monahan.

Travel

Swim challenges, events and festivals segue nicely into swim travel. Holiday trends for 2025 predict more solo, adventure-based travel and what the industry calls ‘silent travel’, which means going off the beaten track rather than to major tourist destinations.

For swim travel experts like SwimQuest, this is the beauty of their offering – expert swim guidance in locations that you might not otherwise visit, seeing the world from a different perspective and swimming adventures with like-minded people. This year, our editor, Ella, will guide swimmers and dippers on a SwimQuest trip to the Azores.

“We have teamed up with Ella to bring you this truly unique swimming holiday,” says SwimQuest. “With family ties to the enchanting island of São Miguel, Ella brings a personal touch to this experience.”

If you fancy a UK-based swim challenge, we love Swim the Lakes’ Great Lake District Swim Challenges. They also offer swim-yoga retreats in collaboration with The Zest Life, which runs retreats in Anglesey, too.

While solo challenge and activity holidays are trending in 2025, so are holidays off-grid with friends and family. More and more holiday rentals come with local swimming recommendations – even their own natural pools and swimming ponds like Oakhill in Somerset, which Ella reviewed in our December issue. “I’m looking forward to going on another Canopy & Stars weekend trip,” says Yvonne, who stayed at Bucks Coppice last year. “I also want to visit more lidos – I’m trying to tick them off one by one from my UK Lidos book.”

More venues

After a huge boost in investment last year, 2025 is the year to enjoy lidos. We’re excited to visit the UK’s deepest Lido, Hilsea in Portsmouth, which is due to reopen this summer. The circular Tinside Lido in Plymouth reopens this spring after a revamp, and London’s first new lido in decades is due to open in Valentine’s Park, Ilford.

More managed open-water venues, including the NOWCA-supported Field Head Farm in Staffordshire and Blenheim Palace Lake in Oxford, are also due to open.

Managed venues mean more employment opportunities for people who want to work in outdoor swimming. In 2025, we expect to see more open water coaches and lifeguards qualifying through the STA (Swimming Teaching Association) and RLSS (Royal Life Saving Society).

There will be opportunities aplenty for those who want to give back to their swimming communities through volunteering, too. While managed swim venues are invaluable for safe swimming, keeping outdoor swimming ‘wild and free’ remains key so that we can all access its benefits – and foster that reciprocal relationship with nature.

Swim hosting for organisations like Mental Health Swims and environmental volunteers are needed more than ever as demand for outdoor swimming continues to increase. “I’m looking forward to stepping more into the role of river guardian for the Wye, my home river,” says our Digital Editor, Abi Whyte. “One day, I’ll be able to put my head in the water while I swim and not have to worry about ingesting chicken poo.”

The environment

It’s impossible to think about future swimming without considering the environment. Climate change and water pollution are very real threats to the way we enjoy outdoor swimming and hugely worrying for the swim locations that we love.

When writing this article, the Water (Special Measures) Bill 2024-2025 was about to have its second reading in Parliament. It’s intended to address water companies’ poor performance, including poor financial management and water pollution. It was introduced in response to ‘widespread concerns about underinvestment in infrastructure, pollution levels and ongoing sewage spills.’

Campaigners, including Surfers Against Sewage, believe that this new bill isn’t sufficient. However, the fact that it exists at all shows the power of community pressure for better water quality, and so we should not let off campaigning in 2025. We can also join more schemes to monitor water quality, such as Earthwatch’s WaterBlitz, which takes place in April, and The River Trusts’ Big River Watch this spring.

Looking after our wellbeing

Having access to nature is so important for everyone. Last year, finding more ways to support more people’s enjoyment of swimming outdoors was significant, and we think this theme will continue in 2025.

In December 2024, a new Nature Connectedness Network website came online, bringing together resources, guides, research and literature to help individuals and organisations get closer to nature for the mutual wellbeing of people and the planet.

This indicates the move towards more green and blue social prescribing and more community projects to bring people and nature together. It’s also about recognising – and overcoming – the barriers that stop people from being able to swim outdoors, such as a lack of swimming skills.

“I’m looking forward to growing our Swim Together project and becoming a Swim Host for Swim Together in my local community,” says Rachel Ashe, Founder of Mental Health Swims. Mental Health Swims has worked with Swim England to build on its highly successful model of supporting individuals’ wellbeing through swimming and peer support, teaching swimming and water confidence skills in pools.

It’s about more than swimming outdoors, though. The number of saunas popping up in the UK and the market for ice baths are both growing rapidly. In our quest for balance and better wellbeing, it feels like our swimmingadjacent activities are becoming an integral part of the outdoor swimming experience.

We’re looking forward to the results of our Trends in Outdoor Swimming survey, which we expect will reflect our impression of outdoor swimming in 2025 – a passionate fight for cleaner water, challenging ourselves to swim further and a continued quest for better health and wellbeing.