The “Golden Quality Beach” award annually distinguishes the quality of bathing water on Portuguese beaches, based on available official public information, taking exclusively into consideration the analyzes carried out in the laboratories of the different regional hydrographic administrations.
According to the criteria defined in 2024, to receive the classification of “Beach with Gold Quality”, bathing water must comply with several criteria, the first of which is having had “excellent” water quality in the annual classification of the five seasons. bathing prior to the last one (in this case, between 2018 and 2022).
All analyzes carried out in the last bathing season (2023) should also have presented better results for several bacterial indicators, compared to the values defined for the 95th percentile of Annex I of the Bathing Water Directive.
Finally, in the last bathing season (2023), there must not have been any type of occurrence/notice advising against bathing, banning bathing and/or temporarily closing the beach.
