The dataset on status of bathing waters in the EU was created in 2015 by Cogea for the European Marine Observation and Data Network (EMODnet). It is based on the dataset 'Bathing Water Directive - Status of bathing water' provided by The European Topic Centre on Water and made available by the European Environment Agency at https://www.eea.europa.eu/data-and-maps/data/bathing-water-directive-status-of-bathing-water-14. The EU Bathing Water Directive requires Member States to identify popular bathing places in fresh and coastal waters and monitor them for indicators of microbiological pollution (and other substances) throughout the bathing season which runs from May to September. The dataset presents the latest information as reported by the Member States, Albania, Switzerland and the United Kingdom for the 2021 bathing season, as well as some historical data since 1990, and it is available for viewing and download on EMODnet - Human Activities web portal ( https://emodnet.ec.europa.eu/en/human-activities). Only coastal and transitional sites are shown on the viewer, while the dataset also contains lake and river sites. The geographic coverage is: Albania, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom. More information are available at https://rod.eionet.europa.eu/obligations/787. Classifications were not made for the UK sites for the 2020 season due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on the sampling programme. Compared with the previous version, the dataset has been updated according to the latest EEA version. 2021 data for UK sites come from national authorities.