Cape Town Dam Levels
This page reports the water stored in Cape Town's major dams, taken from the City of Cape Town's daily readings and refreshed every morning.
Data updated: 2 November 2026 (22 hours, 45 minutes ago)
Total System Storage Healthy
Storage is comfortable and falling, so current levels give no cause for concern about supply.
Water in vs water out
The figure below is the net change in stored water this week, that is, the river inflow and rain less the water drawn off for supply.
drawn from storage this week, because the city is using more water than the rivers are bringing in.
How this number is worked out
We compare the latest reading with the one before it: the six major dams hold 655.6 Mm³ now, against 661.7 Mm³ in the reading of 26 October 2026, a difference of 6.1 Mm³. Spread over 7 days (1 Mm³ is 1 000 million litres), that difference gives the daily figure above.
The figure is a net balance rather than a measure of consumption: it combines rain and river inflow with the water drawn for supply and lost to evaporation, and because the City does not publish daily demand, the two sides cannot be separated here.
Today's level in context
The scale places today's combined storage against the Day Zero trigger, the low reached in 2018 and, where available, last year's level.
Rain outlook over the catchments
The bars show the forecast rainfall for each of the next seven days, averaged across the six dam sites.
Forecast data: Open-Meteo
Dam storage trajectory: 2026 vs 2025
The chart shows the combined storage of the system as a percentage of capacity; over recent weeks it has moved by -0.60 points a week, and the dashed line projects that trend forward.
Dam levels since 2012
The chart shows the combined storage of the six major dams at one reading a week. The lowest weekly reading was 19.6% on 5 June 2017, and the lowest single day was 19.2% on 7 June 2017; from 1 February 2018 residents were limited to 50 litres a day under Level 6B restrictions. Source: City of Cape Town Open Data Portal dataset 'Dam levels Jan 2012 to April 2026' to 29 April 2026; after that, the City's weekly readings as recorded by Cape Town Data. Dataset page
The dam figures come from the City of Cape Town's Open Data Portal and are provided by the City under its Open Data Portal terms, on an as-is basis; we show them unchanged, and we don't own them or charge for them. Restriction levels and dates: City of Cape Town; Western Cape Government; press reports.
Individual Dam Levels
Berg River
Steenbras Lower
Steenbras Upper
Theewaterskloof
Voëlvlei
Wemmershoek
Where the water sits
Each block's width is the dam's share of total capacity; the colour fill shows how full it is today.
Dam Locations
Cape Town's water supply relies on six major dams spread across the Western Cape mountains, from Franschhoek to Gordon's Bay, and the satellite layer of the map shows each of them from above.
About Cape Town's Water Supply
Cape Town's water supply comes from six major dams in the Western Cape. Since the 2017–2018 water crisis, when dam levels dropped below 20% and the city came close to 'Day Zero', residents and visitors alike have followed the dam levels closely.
Did you know?
Theewaterskloof Dam, with a capacity of 480.2 million cubic metres, holds over 50% of Cape Town's total water supply capacity, and during the 2018 crisis it dropped to just 10% of capacity.
This page follows the City of Cape Town's daily storage readings, which we check automatically every morning with a retry in the afternoon, while the weekly and year-ago comparisons come from the City's weekly bulletin.
The full dataset
The whole dam levels archive is available as an Excel workbook with one row per dam per reading, giving the capacity, the percentage full and the volume stored, together with a combined system-total row.
Column dictionary
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
date | Reading date as published by the City (UTC) |
dam | Dam name, or the combined system row |
percentage_full | Share of full supply capacity currently stored |
capacity_mcm | Full supply capacity in million cubic metres |
stored_mcm | Water stored at this reading, in million cubic metres |
is_system_total | true for the combined six-dam row; filter it out to avoid double counting |
last_week_pct, last_year_pct | Comparison figures: the City's own where its tables align, otherwise from our archived readings |
source_updated_utc | Full publication timestamp of the reading (ISO 8601, UTC) |
source | Organisation that published the reading |
source_url | Page the reading was published on |
Daily dam levels since 2012
The City of Cape Town's Open Data Portal publishes daily storage figures for the 14 dams in the Western Cape supply system from January 2012 onward, covering the 2015 to 2018 drought. We provide the series unchanged, reshaped to one row per dam per day, with percentage full, storage in megalitres and gauge height.
Column dictionary
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
date | Reading date as published by the City (UTC) |
dam | Dam name, or the City's combined major or minor dams row |
percentage_full | Share of gross storage capacity held at this reading, in percent |
storage_ml | Water stored at this reading, in megalitres |
height_m | Gauge height in metres (blank for the combined rows) |
is_major_dam | true for the six major dams that supply most of the city |
is_system_total | true for the City's combined row; filter it out to avoid double counting |
source | Organisation that published the reading |
source_url | Page the dataset is published on |
Weekly water use from November 2016 to August 2026
Cape Town used about 860 million litres of water a day in the first weeks the City reported the figure (21 November 2016 to 9 January 2017), and in 2018, the year with the lowest average, it used about 540 million litres a day. In 2025, the last complete year, the average was about 900 million litres a day. From February 2026 the dashboard notes that its total includes water supplied to the Stellenbosch and Drakenstein municipalities. The six major dams fell to 19.6% in June 2017 and stood at 77.7% on 7 August 2026.
Restriction levels and dates: City of Cape Town; Western Cape Government; press reports.
About this data
These figures are not ours: the City of Cape Town published them in its weekly water dashboards and media statements, and we have gathered them in one place, without changing the numbers, so that they are easier to find and compare.
This information resides at and is the property of the City of Cape Town. We don't own it, we don't charge for it and we don't use it for commercial purposes. Each row links to the original document it came from; some of those documents are no longer on the City's website, and we found them in copies kept by the Internet Archive and by Piotr Wolski at the University of Cape Town, to both of whom we are grateful.
We have checked every figure against its source, but mistakes in copying are possible, so a number that matters to you should be checked against the original and cited to the City of Cape Town. Cape Town Data is not part of, or endorsed by, the City of Cape Town.
Where these figures come from
The figures are the City of Cape Town's own weekly averages, and most rows come from the City's weekly Water Dashboard PDFs preserved by Piotr Wolski at UCT's Climate System Analysis Group. Each row of the dataset links to the exact page or PDF it was read from, and the rows come from the following sources:
- 39 rows: City of Cape Town media statements
- 65 rows: City of Cape Town weekly Water Dashboard PDFs preserved by the Internet Archive (Wayback Machine)
- 381 rows: City of Cape Town weekly Water Dashboard PDFs preserved by Piotr Wolski, Climate System Analysis Group (CSAG), University of Cape Town
- 3 rows: SAnews (South African Government News Agency) quoting the City
- 1 row: City of Cape Town Water Dashboard PDF copy hosted by Circle of Blue
The series was compiled and checked by Cape Town Data, and weeks without a City figure are left blank. The City described the dashboard figures as indicative and subject to verification by the national Department of Water and Sanitation. Request the data
These are the City of Cape Town's own weekly averages of the city's daily water use. The City began reporting them when Level 3 restrictions started on 1 November 2016, first in its weekly media statements on capetown.gov.za and from 2017 on its weekly Water Dashboard PDF, a rolling file the City does not archive. Most of the rows come from the dashboard editions preserved by Piotr Wolski at the University of Cape Town's Climate System Analysis Group; the rest from the City's statements and from Wayback Machine copies. Each row carries the link to the exact City page or PDF it was read from. Weeks without a published figure are left empty and listed in the workbook, and nothing is estimated. No weekly figures exist for 2015 or for January to October 2016.
Column dictionary
| Column | Description |
|---|---|
week_start | Monday of the seven-day week the average covers |
published | Date on the dashboard, or the date the statement was published |
avg_daily_ml | Average daily water use from all sources, in megalitres per day, as published |
avg_daily_ml_large_dams_only | The dashboard's separate figure for water from the large dams only (January to June 2018) |
dam_storage_pct | Combined level of the major dams in percent, where the source gives it |
target_ml_per_day | Daily use target stated by the source |
source_type | City dashboard, City media statement, or SAnews quoting the City |
figure_wording | Dashboard label, or a short quote of the statement's sentence |
source_url | Page or archived file the figure was read from |
note | Caveats, for example when the statement does not say which week it means |
week_uncertain | true when the source does not say which week it means; the row is keyed to the week before publication |
major_dams_ml, minor_dams_ml, groundwater_springs_ml, desalination_ml | Production by source in megalitres a day, where the dashboard gives it (from 2020; desalination to July 2022) |
per_person_l_per_day | Average use per person in litres a day, City of Cape Town only (dashboards from February 2026) |