Viking Rhine River Cruises Basel to Amsterdam

You should probably be looking at Cruise Critic. It has threads in its forum that provide frequent updates on water levels. As for communication from Viking, that would not occur until shortly before your trip. e.g., https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/3096138-rhine-water-levels-2026-plus-info-and-tips/page/21/

This is a link to the last page of a thread on Cruise Critic specifically discussing Rhine water levels in 2026. The thread started in January and at the moment is 23 pages long. The most active participant is highly knowledgeable and posts a ton of detail about water levels etc. The summary AT THE MOMENT seems to be: yes, trips are currently impacted, with ship swaps, longer bus rides, hotel stays in some cases. But there's no telling what the situation will be in September. I would NOT expect Viking to be very forthcoming about trip deviations and disruptions. Some companies are better about it, but it seems that they are not (no personal experience yet -- supposed to go on that cruise next May).

So hop on that Cruise Critic board and read it like you're going to do a dissertation on it, and keep monitoring what's happening.

https://boards.cruisecritic.com/topic/3096138-rhine-water-levels-2026-plus-info-and-tips/page/23/

see several posts by Carol Now Retired on her recent experience:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/lessons-learned-when-things-go-wrong

3 part trip report

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/rhine-river-cruise-part-1-pretour-and-basel-colmar-strasbourg

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/rhine-river-cruise-part-2-heidelberg-boppard-and-on-the-ship

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/trip-reports/rhine-river-cruise-part-3-koblenz-cologne-and-amsterdam

The current predictions look forward as far as the first week in September. In that week, it looks like the river might be around 75 cm at the Kaub measuring station, located just downstream from Bacharach. Orange block in the chart linked to below shows the predicted range, so maybe a little less or a little more. Historically, the measurement has been 2+ times higher for that week:

https://vorhersage.bafg.de/6-Wochen-Vorhersage/Rhein-Kaub_6Wochen_Wasserstand.pdf

From this point on, river is expected to rise, but only incrementally. 75 cm is somewhere around 40% of the historical average.

Smaller ships which do day cruises should be able to manage. Freighters and bigger passenger ships may or may not depending on the judgment of the individual captains / cruise providers.

You may want to check this website after a few more weeks to see how it's going.

I hope it works out for you. We took that trip in July 2016 and my fear was that it would turn into a very expensive bus trip.

Have you signed up for any extra excursions? If not, I suggest you save your money. We signed up for the wine tasting excursion when in the Moselle region. It's advertised as four wine tastings. Since we've done lots of wine tastings in the past, I took that to mean we'd visit four wineries.

Well, we didn't visit any wineries. We were taken to a wine shop in the middle of a village. In the wine cellar we got to taste four different mediocre wines. It took about 30% of the total stop, with the rest spent in their retail area where they tried to sell us that mediocre wine for about three times what it should have cost.

We took this same cruise in Christmas Season. The water was low in Basel; so we got on near Freiburg. We were bused once in the Middle Rhein from one ship to another (identical). The bus portion was lousy but overall we had a good time. We had done the
Danube on another trip. It was better as you stop nearer the sights, allowing more chance to visit sights without the hassle of buses.

Looking at recent Facebook posts, some companies are cancelling, some are doing boat switches, others bus/hotel.

All the Vikinig cruises were on buses today in Rüdesheim. There were 3, maybe 4 bus loads.
I would wait. Otherwise, you may spend your whole cruise on a bus.

Are you already booked? Do you know what your options are? I saw long range weather forecasts and they are not expecting rainfall to significantly improve. All the snowmelt that would be feeding the Rhine earlier in the year is long gone. If there is any way you can delay or back out, I'd be working on it.

We were along the Middle Rhine today, there are no river cruises running between Koblenz and Rudesheim. The closest we saw was one smaller vessel trying to work it's way upstream, with no passengers.

Even the day excursion cruises are eliminating sailings, or running altered routes with their smaller boats. Nothing is leaving or arriving at Bingen on KD lines for example, Rudesheim may still have sailings, maybe half of the stops along the middle Rhine are shut down. The Goethe vintage ship will not be running until the end of August, maybe, they are using another vessel, but only going so far down as Boppard, not to Koblenz. The other line that leaves from Bingen and Rudesheim seems to have more of a schedule, but they had 3-4 of their vessels tied up on Sunday.

The worst section for water levels seems to be from Boppard to Koblenz. Freighters are still running though.

The silver lining for some? The newly formed beaches on the river seem popular, lots of people out sunning, walking along the waters edge, swimming and wading.

Just as a follow up. It is unlikely that you will hear anything from Viking much in advance of your actual trip dates. They will notify last minute if any changes.

So, what do you need to do now? You need to decide if you are willing to gamble that the river will rise before your trip or if you need to change plans. The cruise line will switch to a bus/hotel option if necessary. I have been checking out posts on some cruise facebook pages and there are some very unhappy people out there who thought they were going on a river cruise and ended up on an expensive bus tour. They post pictures of parking lots from their hotel rooms and vent a bit.

I can sympathize because my river cruise was impacted this summer. We did 3 nights hotel/buses and 4 nights on the cruise ship. None of it was a bad experience, but there is a noticeable difference between the two options. I will say that in fairness to the cruise line, when I first signed up I had to read a pretty long disclaimer about fluctuating river levels and possible impact on cruises and check that I understood before putting down my deposit. I had no notice about the changes due to an email problem, but the others on my cruise only had 2 days notice.

If I had over a month to see about changing my plans, perhaps rescheduling for a different time or coming up with a plan B in Europe, I would probably think about changing those plans at this point.

To put VRC in perspective, we took the Rhine Cruise and a trip to Chianti six months apart Trip length was the same. Chianti included a rental car, tours in Rome and Florence with no more than 10 others and exquisite food. We planned everything ourselves.

The VRC cost THREE TIMES as much as the Chianti trip.

that put's nothing into perspective, cruise ships cost more to run with high staffing levels so will be more expensive and the level of service is likely to be higher.

Anyway, the water problem.....

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c78gn8zvrx4o drag the slider in the aerial photo to compare now with last summer

Has this been affected by those traveling Viking Rhine Basel to Amsterdam in July and August? : Basel to Berisach to Strasbourg to Speyer to Rudesheim to Koblenz to Cologne to Kinderdijk and disembark in Amsterdam?

My wife and i will be going mid Sept on the Viking Rhine River Cruise from Basel to Amsterdam. Thanks to all providing comments and recommendations. Its a once in a lifetime vacation for us. It was alot of logistics (which I wont go into detail) and expense on our part to make this happen. If there will be major disruptions to Viking because of the low river (not faulting them for that), they should be forthright in that communication so we can make the decision to do something else with Viking (like use the credit to book an Alaskan cruise). Hopefully Viking can communicate that 1st week Sept to give us a choice to cancel and use the credit for another cruise with them because there will be major disruptions.

It does put the cost of a river cruise compared to vacationing in Europe other ways in perspective, especially since booking a river cruise is a gamble.

I think river cruises and ski vacations will continue to be impacted by climate change. Daily rates for VRC run from $400-$900 per guest! We walked 95 miles over 10 days in the Lake District, walking from village to village. With lodging and meals we spent right at $200 day total.

I hope the trip works out for the OP and they have a wonderful time. If they decide to bail, I hope they consider alternative ways to see Europe that are cheaper, less vulnerable to adverse conditions and more rewarding overall.

you need to contact Viking and discuss options, because the contract states they can swap you to busses and hotels for all or part - and swap
Ships too- so it’s time to call them and walk through your options. Good luck!

I have a cruise Nurnberg to Basil in November so there be a chance for some rain. If you have cancel for any reason you might want to change dates. Per what I see on Viking Facebook groups there is a lot of busing going on with little notice. Viking does not appear to be canceling any tours.

I’ve watched some YouTube videos about cruising by this person and today she came out with one about Viking cruises on the Rhine. Very relevant and lots of pertinent information.

https://youtu.be/MYCzLojlqIM?si=uVlAOjZzogUVGyrV

Instead of clicking on the link you can go to the Luxury Travel Docs channel on YouTube. It’s titled Viking River Cruise Low Water Crisis 2026.

I’ve watched some YouTube videos about cruising by this person and today she came out with one about Viking cruises on the Rhine. Very relevant and lots of pertinent information.

I highly suggest that anyone thinking about taking a river cruise ever, especially with Viking, watch the link she posted. River cruising will become more risky in the future.

Viking cruises are nothing like presented on PBS. They also use what I consider to be high pressure salesmanship. Of all the ways we've traveled in Europe river cruises have been the worst if you really want to get a taste of the area.

These are interesting links for those doing the Rhine River Cruise now and in a few weeks.

https://rivercruisewatch.com

https://amsterdamexperiences.nl/rhine-river-cruise-water-levels/