Swimming in cold water history and development

The winter swimming traditions in Lithuania have been around for almost four decades. In 1987, the first winter swimming festivals were held, and in 1994, the first "Seal Festival" took place in Palanga, becoming a long-standing tradition and the most important swimming event in the country. These events laid the foundation for the Lithuanian winter swimming community and encouraged thousands of people to discover the benefits of winter swimming.

In 2016, a new chapter began. We started organizing regular winter swimming training sessions, events, and competitions, aiming to make cold water sports accessible to everyone. Over more than a decade, we have built an active community across Lithuania, organized dozens of events, national and international competitions, and contributed to the rapid growth of winter swimming.

The first swim was organized in a week, we cut out 3 lanes and swam 30 people 25 meters, recording everything in protocols and awarding the first champions.

Later, with each passing year, everything improved, grew, we started traveling to our neighbors (Latvia, Estonia, Poland, Finland, Norway), got acquainted with the global community, with representatives of the IWSA (International Winter Swimming Association), and the need arose to establish the Lithuanian winter swimming federation, hoping for another qualitative leap in promoting what we love.

Every year, steadily swimming with several hundred participants,
in 2025 we reached a level where the world had already heard about Lithuania as a winter swimming country, people started coming, and we had participants from 15 different countries, and we were no longer called "25 meter swimming in the hole" but became the Lithuanian Open Winter Swimming Championship.