Gothenburg, Västra Götaland tide times

Predictions: Open-Meteo Marine (MeteoFrance SMOC, 0.08° grid) — heights relative to MSL (not chart datum / LAT). Model-derived.

Model-derived from a global ocean grid. Useful indication; expect about ±45 minutes on average vs. a local harmonic gauge, individual stations vary widely. See /methodology for per-region detail. Not for navigation.

Conditions as of 06:00 local time. Refreshes daily.

Predictions: Open-Meteo Marine (MeteoFrance SMOC, 0.08° grid) — heights relative to MSL (not chart datum / LAT). Model-derived. · Not for navigation.

The angler tradition for major/minor fishing windows: major ≈3-hour windows around moon transit and opposition; minor ≈2-hour windows around moonrise and moonset. Times are Europe/Stockholm local. Folk tradition, not a scientific forecast.

Next spring tide on Fri 22 May (range 0.3m). Next neap on Tue 19 May.

Spring tides cluster around new and full moons (biggest swings). Neap tides land on quarter moons (smallest swings). See the spring tide and neap tide glossary entries for the why.

Gothenburg sits at the mouth of the Göta älv on Sweden's western coast, fronting the Kattegat and the southern Skagerrak with the long Bohuslän archipelago of granite skerries running north toward the Norwegian border at Strömstad. This is the only stretch of the Swedish coastline that sees a meaningful astronomical tide. East of the Öresund the Baltic runs a near-flat regime where the long basin and the narrow Danish straits prevent the open-ocean signal from reaching the eastern Swedish coast at any meaningful amplitude — Stockholm reads less than 10 centimetres on a spring tide. Gothenburg by contrast sits on the open North Sea / Skagerrak system and registers a small but real semidiurnal pattern: mean range at the Göteborg port gauge is about 0.3 metres, climbing past 0.5 metres on the largest spring tides and dropping close to flat on neaps. The astronomical forcing stays small because the Skagerrak is a wide shallow basin off the open ocean rather than a resonant funnel. What matters more on a day-to-day basis is the meteorological tide — sustained westerly gales push water against the Bohuslän archipelago and lift apparent water level 30 to 60 centimetres above predicted, and the same wind drains the Kattegat into the Baltic on the rebound through the Öresund and the Belts. The Göta älv discharge through the central city adds a freshwater component to the harbour signal that varies with snowmelt and rainfall upstream. The Bohuslän archipelago — Marstrand, Käringön, Gullholmen, the Koster Islands at the Norwegian border — is one of the great cruising grounds of northern Europe, and the lobster fishing season that opens on the last Monday of September is a strict calendar event regardless of tide. The Saltholmen ferry to the southern archipelago, the working container terminal at the Göta älv mouth, the sailing-school fleet out of GKSS at Långedrag, the cold-water swim culture at Saltholmen kallbadhus, and the herring-and-mackerel boats out of Smögen further north all read the wider weather pattern more than the tide table. Open-Meteo Marine drives the gridded predictions on this page; for authoritative Swedish water-level forecasts, SMHI publishes the official tide and surge products and operates the gauge network at Göteborg, Smögen, and Kungsvik.