Igal Gyógyfürdő: 13 Pools for 4,500 Ft in the Somogy Hills

Igal sells a full day on certified medicinal water for 4,500 Ft. Széchenyi in Budapest charges 13,200 Ft on a weekday for a bath you will queue for. That gap is the entire argument for driving two hours south into Somogy, and it holds up.

What you get for it is a 13-pool municipal bath in a town of under 3,000 people, where the water comes out of the ground at 76°C, the sauna world is included in the ticket rather than sold as an upgrade, and most of the people in the medicinal pool are working through a course of treatments their rheumatologist wrote out. It is not pretty. It is not marketed to you. It is very good at the thing it does.

Two things changed recently and both affect your trip: the opening hours moved on 1 September, and two indoor pools are shut. Details below, in that order.

Photo: Civertan Grafikai Stúdió, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. An older aerial of the complex, taken before the water slides were added.

📋 At a Glance

What	Detail
Adult ticket	4,500 Ft (about $14), full day, everything included
Evening ticket	3,700 Ft (about $12) from 15:00
Hours	Daily 9:00-19:00, ticket desk until 18:00, pools clear at 18:30
Water	76°C at the well, alkaline chloride and hydrogen carbonate, iodic
Pools	13 in total, indoor section year-round, beach section May to September
Currently shut	Indoor experience pool and indoor children’s paddling pool
Distance from Budapest	158 km, about 2 hours by car on the M7
Distance from Balaton	40 km from the southern shore, 24 km from Kaposvár
Address	7275 Igal, Rákóczi tér 30
Phone	+36 70 338 6446
Website	igalfurdo.hu

What Igal Actually Is

A municipal bath, owned by the town outright, running since 1962 and certified as a medicinal bath since spring 2001. The first drilling here in the 1940s went looking for oil on the old market ground and found 81°C water at 651 metres instead, which is how a farming village in outer Somogy ended up with a spa economy.

The site grew in slow municipal increments rather than one investor’s masterplan: two pools handed over on 20 August 1962, winterised three years later, a swimming pool and three children’s pools in 1967, the indoor bath in 2003, a shade canopy over the two outdoor thermal pools in 2008, and a 600 million Ft EU-backed extension in June 2012 that added 1,400 m² of building, two 300-person changing rooms, five treatment rooms and the sauna world. Over 200,000 people a year come through it.

On 7 October 2016 Igal was certified as a gyógyhely, a state-recognised healing place. It was Hungary’s 26th and it is still the only one in Somogy county. The certification is not about the bath alone: the inspection covered air quality across all four seasons, noise levels, green space and infrastructure across the wider area. It also has a practical consequence most visitors never hear about, covered under treatments below.

What this adds up to on the ground is a bath where nothing is staged. The signage is Hungarian, the decor is a competent 2012 renovation rather than a design statement, and the grandmothers in the 38°C pool are discussing their prescriptions with people who have the same one.

What Is Out of Service Right Now

Two things, and the operator states both on its own site.

The indoor experience section is closed. That means the indoor experience pool and the indoor children’s paddling pool, shut for technical reasons with no reopening date published. Those are the two indoor pools a family with a toddler comes for, so between October and April this materially changes who the bath works for. The medicinal pools, the thermal jacuzzi, the sauna world and the whole outdoor section are unaffected.

The giant slide has come off its summer schedule. From 1 September 2026 the 50-metre triple-lane slide no longer runs on weekdays. The operator says that if the weather allows, it opens on the first two weekends of September from 10:00 to 18:00. It never runs in rain or storms. There is also a warning worth reading before you queue: the rubber lining can tint some swimwear, and the slide is used at your own risk.

Before a trip built around either of those, call +36 70 338 6446. A municipal bath’s website is not a live status board.

What It Costs

Entry is a single ticket covering the medicinal section, the beach section, the sauna world and the giant slide. There is no zone system and no upgrade tier, which is a quiet luxury after Budapest.

Ticket	Price	About
Adult, 20-60	4,500 Ft	$14
Senior, over 60	3,900 Ft	$12
Youth, 4-20	3,500 Ft	$11
Child under 4	Free	Free
Adult, in and out all day	4,700 Ft	$15
Senior, in and out all day	4,200 Ft	$13
Youth, in and out all day	3,900 Ft	$12
Adult, from 15:00	3,700 Ft	$12
Senior, from 15:00	3,300 Ft	$10
Youth, from 15:00	3,200 Ft	$10

The evening tickets go on sale at the desk from 12:00, so you can buy the cheaper one three hours before it starts. Discounted categories need photo ID at the desk. Groups over 20 get 10% off, and parties of 45 or more are told to ask for a quote. SZÉP card and bank cards are both accepted.

Igal residents pay 2,100 Ft as an adult, 1,900 Ft over 60 and 1,700 Ft for ages 4 to 20. That is not a ticket you can buy, but it tells you what the town considers this bath to be: infrastructure, not attraction.

Family tickets

Valid for a minimum of three people, with children aged 4 to 14.

Party	Full day	From 15:00
1 adult + 2 children	9,000 Ft	7,500 Ft
2 adults + 1 child	10,000 Ft	8,200 Ft
2 adults + 2 children	12,800 Ft	10,900 Ft
2 adults + 3 children	15,000 Ft	13,500 Ft

Passes, if you are staying for a course

Each pass allows one entry per person per day. The 7-day pass has to be used up within 30 days of purchase, the 14-day within 60.

Pass	Adult	Senior	Youth
7 days, one entry a day	27,000 Ft	23,400 Ft	21,000 Ft
7 days, in and out	28,200 Ft	25,200 Ft	23,400 Ft
14 days, one entry a day	54,000 Ft	46,800 Ft	42,000 Ft

A 7-day adult pass works out at about 3,857 Ft a visit against 4,500 Ft on the gate, so it pays back on day seven rather than day two. Buy it because you are doing a treatment course, not because you expect a bargain.

Extras and parking

Item	Price	Note
Locker key deposit	1,000 Ft	Refundable when you hand the key back
Value safe	1,000 Ft	Rental, not a deposit
Sun lounger, one day	1,500 Ft	Summer season
Changing cabin, one day	1,500 Ft	Worth it with children
Changing cabin, seven days	9,000 Ft	Pairs with the weekly pass
Car parking	700 Ft/hour or 800 Ft/day	Run by the town, not the bath
Coach parking	1,400 Ft/hour or 1,600 Ft/day	Run by the town, not the bath

The daily parking rate is barely more than one hour, so pay for the day the moment you arrive and stop thinking about it.

Prices are in HUF, which is what you pay at the counter. Converted at 1 USD = 316 HUF, the ECB rate on 1 September 2026. Rates move, so treat the converted figures as indicative.

For the wider picture, we compare what Budapest’s baths charge against what they deliver in the thermal bath price versus quality breakdown, and Igal sits well under everything in it.

The Pools, and What Temperature Each One Runs

The operator counts 13 pools in total. The indoor ones run year-round and the beach section opens from May to September. Here is what the bath’s own pool page gives for each.

Photo: Civertan Grafikai Stúdió, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. An older aerial of two of the outdoor pools; deck furniture and signage have changed since.

Pool	Depth	Temperature	Season
Indoor thermal pool	70 cm	34-36°C	Year-round
Indoor medicinal pool	70 cm	36-38°C	Year-round
Thermal jacuzzi	90 cm	35-38°C	Year-round
Indoor experience pool	120 cm	32-34°C	Year-round, currently out of service
Indoor children’s paddling pool	30 cm	32-34°C	Year-round, currently out of service
Sauna plunge pool	140 cm	18-20°C	Year-round
Outdoor thermal pools	110 cm	35-38°C	May to September
Outdoor family pools	35-115 cm	30-34°C	May to September
33-metre swimming pool	150-180 cm	23-25°C	May to September
Castiglione pool	95-110 cm	23-25°C	May to September
Slide arrival pool	100 cm	28-32°C	May to September

Two details worth planning around. The 70 cm depth on both indoor thermal pools means these are sitting pools, not swimming pools; the only real swimming here is the 33-metre outdoor pool, and that is summer only. And the jacuzzi is in the inner courtyard, so in January you walk outside to reach it, which is the best five seconds of the visit.

The children’s slide, the Fáncsi, has a 40 kg weight limit and lands in a 56 cm paddling pool. The 50-metre giant slide is three lanes wide, included in the ticket, and runs May to mid-September on the schedule described above.

The Sauna World Is Included, and Nobody Says So Loudly Enough

Every entry ticket carries unlimited use of the sauna world. In Budapest that is a paid add-on at most baths. Here it is simply part of the 4,500 Ft.

What is in it: two Finnish saunas running at different temperatures, one at roughly 90°C and one at roughly 70°C, two infrared cabins, and a cold plunge pool. The hotter Finnish cabin is where staff run Aufguss sessions. Occasional sauna séances with visiting sauna masters are announced in advance and charged separately, so those are the exception to “included”.

Two house rules that catch people: a shower is compulsory every single time before the plunge pool, and the sauna world has to be cleared at the same time as the pools, half an hour before the bath closes. Since 1 September that means everyone is out of the water by 18:30, not 19:00.

The Water, and What It Is Certified to Treat

The well feeding the pools sits at 76°C, and each pool is set to its own temperature from it. The composition is alkaline chloride and hydrogen carbonate, and the iodide content puts it in the iodic group.

Component	mg per litre
Total dissolved solids	10,358
Chloride	3,829
Sodium	3,370
Hydrogen carbonate	2,763
Potassium	142
Sulphate	69.8
Calcium	54.5
Bromide	13.1
Magnesium	13.0
Fluoride	7.2
Iodide	3.3

The operator lists the water as helping rheumatic musculoskeletal complaints, circulation problems after an injury, joint complaints, chronic gynaecological inflammation including bleeding disorders and cystitis, urological problems, spinal complaints and fertility problems. Recommended bathing time is 20 minutes in the medicinal pools and 40 minutes in the thermal pools, repeatable several times a day, so the intended pattern is several short sessions rather than one long soak.

There is a drinking fountain next to the outdoor thermal pools, fed straight from the well. As a drinking cure the water is put forward for metabolic and digestive complaints, gastritis, hyperacidity, reflux, ulcers and sluggish bowels, at 0.5 to 1 decilitre in the morning on an empty stomach. At 3,829 mg of chloride and 3,370 mg of sodium per litre, half a decilitre is genuinely the dose.

The contraindication list is real and the operator publishes it: malignant tumours, cardiovascular disease, very high blood pressure, coronary sclerosis, recovery after a heart attack, severe varicose veins, acute inflammation, acute or chronic infectious illness, asthma with frequent attacks, kidney failure, hyperthyroidism, and severe weight loss or gain. If any of those apply, ask a doctor before you book a course, not after.

Treatments, and the Hungarian Prescription System

There are two price lists here and the gap between them is enormous.

Private prices, which is what you pay as a visitor:

Massage	20 min	30 min	40 min	60 min
Standard	3,800 Ft	4,800 Ft	5,900 Ft	8,200 Ft
Aromatic oil	4,100 Ft	5,100 Ft	6,200 Ft	8,600 Ft
Igal medicinal-water cream	4,500 Ft	5,500 Ft	6,500 Ft	9,000 Ft
Lymphatic drainage	not offered	not offered	6,200 Ft	8,700 Ft

Treatment	Duration	Price
Tangentor, underwater jet massage	20 min	3,800 Ft
Parafango mud pack	20 min	4,200 Ft
Hot stone massage	30 min	6,200 Ft
Cellulite massage with cupping	30 min	6,200 Ft
Body peel	20 min	3,700 Ft

State-insured prices, between 500 Ft and 1,200 Ft a session depending on the treatment, which is roughly a quarter of the private rate. Those need a Hungarian TB card. The route is a GP referral to a rheumatologist, who writes a kezelőlap for four blocks of 15 treatments, twice a year. The course has to start within 28 days of being written and stays valid for 56 days after that. Appointments have to be booked in advance, in person at the cash desk or on +36 70 338 6446, and treatments run at weekends too, which is unusual.

A rheumatology clinic runs at the bath on Tuesday afternoons for a limited number of patients, on a GP referral plus registration. And if you are bringing a prescription card, note that the bath is only open to you until 17:00, two hours before general closing.

Two practical traps. For a state-insured medical massage, a massage sheet is compulsory under public-health rules and a towel does not count; if you do not own one, buy it at the cash desk for 600 Ft when you register and bring it to every session. And the healing-place certification matters here: several Western European health insurers reimburse balneotherapy when it is carried out at a certified gyógyhely, which Igal is. Ask your insurer before assuming you are paying the tourist rate.

Worth the Trip from Budapest?

As a standalone day trip, no. As a leg of a Balaton trip or the base for a treatment week, yes, comfortably.

By car it is 158 km and roughly 2 hours, out on the M7 towards Balaton, off at the Bálványos exit just before the Kőröshegy viaduct, then south towards Kaposvár. That is four hours of driving for a bath you will have finished with in four, which is a thin day out when Budapest’s own baths are on a metro line.

Without a car, there is a daily direct coach from Budapest’s Népliget bus station that runs through Igal on its way to Kaposvár, and there are trains to Kaposvár with local buses covering the last 24 km. Both are doable and neither is quick.

The trip that works starts somewhere else. From Balaton’s southern shore, Siófok, Zamárdi or Balatonföldvár, Igal is 40 km inland and a genuinely good rainy-afternoon answer when the lake is grey. Our Balaton day trip guide covers that side of the drive. And if you are in the region for the water rather than the scenery, Igal is one of a cluster: Harkány is the sulfur specialist a couple of hours further south, Csokonyavisonta is the closest thing to Igal in temperament, and Zalakaros is the one to pick if you actually want slides and a resort.

When to Go

When	What you get	Worth it?
Weekday after 15:00	3,700 Ft entry, morning therapy patients gone, families not yet in	The best version of this bath
Weekday morning	Full price, quiet, treatment traffic at the desk	Fine if you are booked in for a treatment
Summer weekend	Every pool that is running (two indoor ones are shut), the slide, the sports pitches, and every family in Somogy	Only with children
Winter, October to April	The indoor pools that are running, the courtyard jacuzzi, the sauna world	The therapeutic season, and the best value
Public holidays	Everything open, everything full	Avoid

Winter is the underrated call. The outdoor half shuts from October, but the indoor pools, the courtyard jacuzzi and the sauna world all run, the price does not change, and the people who need this water do not stop needing it in February.

The bath also runs a fair number of events, which is either a draw or a warning depending on your temperament: a harvest pool ball on 20 September 2026, an OktoberFest on 10 October, and a Márton day evening on 7 November, all inside normal opening hours.

Where to Stay

Igal is a small town and the accommodation reflects that: family-run guesthouses, apartments, and the Termál Panzió immediately next to the bath with 20 rooms including singles and family rooms. The bath’s own site keeps a list of partner accommodation, which is the sanest starting point because it is the only list that is actually maintained.

If you want restaurants, a cinema and a proper high street in the evening, base yourself in Kaposvár 24 km away and drive in. If you want the lake, base yourself on the southern shore 40 km away. Staying in Igal itself makes sense for exactly one reason, a treatment course, and for that reason it makes total sense.

What Is Genuinely Wrong with Igal

The town has nothing else in it. Under 3,000 people, no nightlife, a handful of places to eat. Come for the bath and leave, or come for a week with a prescription and a book.

The food on site is limited. There is a buffet, a restaurant and a wine bar in the 2012 extension, and none of them is the reason anyone drives here. Bring a cooler in summer.

English is not the second language, German is. Reception can usually manage both, but signage and most staff conversation is Hungarian, and Austrian and German bath tourists are a bigger share of the foreign traffic than English speakers. A translation app closes the gap.

And the closures matter. Two of the indoor pools are the two built for small children, and they are the ones currently switched off. Nothing about that is hidden, but it does mean a winter family trip is currently a worse deal than the price list suggests.

The Verdict

Go on a weekday, buy the 3,700 Ft ticket at noon, walk in at 15:00 and stay until the pools clear at 18:30. Three and a half hours of 38°C water, unlimited sauna, and change from 4,000 Ft.

Igal is not competing with Széchenyi and has no interest in doing so. It is competing with the other municipal baths in the region for people who need the water, and it wins that on price, on the sauna being included, and on the certification behind the pools. If you are within an hour of it, go. If you are in Budapest with one free day, the cheaper end of the Budapest baths will serve you better, and the countryside bath roundup will tell you which of the others is worth a longer drive.

Sources

• Igali-Gyógyfürdő, opening hours and prices for every figure in the ticket, family, pass, rental, treatment and parking tables, plus the hours and current closure notices
• Igali-Gyógyfürdő, pools and slides for pool depths, temperatures and seasons
• Igali-Gyógyfürdő, the Igal medicinal water for the mineral analysis and indications
• Igali-Gyógyfürdő, state-insured treatments for the prescription route, contraindications and treatment durations
• Igali-Gyógyfürdő, history and healing-place status for the 1962 opening, the 2012 extension and the 2016 certification
• Igal town, getting here for the coach and rail routes and the regional distances

All operator figures checked 2 September 2026.