Haute-Savoie has the boards, the Swiss shore has a ban
Two beaches on the south side of the lake put eFoils in the water in summer, at Thonon-les-Bains and at Saint-Gingolph, and the second of them also rents the board to riders who already fly. That is the whole offer. Geneva, Lausanne and Montreux have nothing to sell you, because no operator will put an eFoil on Swiss water, where federal law and the Federal Court treat the board as banned.
The border runs through the lake, and so do the rules. Switzerland holds roughly 345 km² of the 580 km² and France 235 km². A Franco-Swiss treaty regulation applies to every square meter of it, Haute-Savoie lays a prefectoral order over the French part, and a federal ordinance governs the Swiss part. The three texts part ways on the eFoil, so the beach you launch from decides what you may do. The lake in question is the Alpine one the French call le Léman, not its namesake in Wisconsin.
Evolution 2 on the Quai de Ripaille and at Saint-Gingolph
One school, Evolution 2, runs both bases. Its Thonon beach point stands on the Quai de Ripaille, between the municipal pool and the Château de Ripaille. Saint-Gingolph is the last village before the border at the eastern end of the French shore, and there the school works from the municipal beach at 1 Quai André Chevallay, beside the supervised swimming area.
Gliss Camp sells sessions off that Saint-Gingolph beach at the lesson prices Evolution 2 charges, and adds something the school does not: a board on rental. Évian, which lies between the two bases, has ports and landing stages and no eFoil base.
Groups are capped at three riders, and you must be able to swim. A beginner starts lying on the board, then kneels or sits before standing up. The school says its boards reach up to 50 km/h. Board, wetsuit, helmet and vest are in the price.
Prices in euros, with the francs alongside
Per rider, and identical at both sellers for every lesson but one, the improver course. Evolution 2 prints each group slot with its time on the water: around 30 minutes inside a 45 minute slot, about an hour inside an hour and a quarter. The private hour aims at flying and at making long and tight turns.
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| Offer | Seller | Price per rider |
|---|---|---|
| Group, about 30 min on the water | Both | €70 (about CHF 65) |
| Group, about 45 min on the water | Both | €100 (about CHF 90) |
| Group, about 1 h on the water | Both | €125 (about CHF 115) |
| Private, 45 min | Both | €130 (about CHF 120) |
| Private, 1 h | Both | €160 (about CHF 145) |
| Beginner course, 3 x 45 min | Both | €255 (about CHF 235) |
| Improver course, 3 x 45 min | Evolution 2 | €255 (about CHF 235) |
| Improver course, 3 x 45 min | Gliss Camp | €225 (about CHF 205) |
| Rental, 30 min | Gliss Camp | €60 (about CHF 55) |
| Rental, 45 min | Gliss Camp | €75 (about CHF 70) |
| Rental, 1 h | Gliss Camp | €90 (about CHF 80) |
The euro is the only currency on the lake's eFoil beaches, since every base is in France, and the franc figures move with the exchange rate. Nobody rents to a walk-up. Each rental duration is sold subject to the base validating your level, and Gliss Camp opens the activity to children from 11.
Art. 78d of the treaty and art. 6.5 of the order
Start with the text the whole lake shares, the Règlement de la navigation sur le Léman (RS 0.747.221.11), annexed to the Franco-Swiss accord of 7 December 1976. Since 1 June 2019 its art. 78d has read: “L'usage des véhicules nautiques à moteurs et de tout engin similaire quel qu'en soit le mode de propulsion est interdit”. Personal watercraft are banned, and with them any similar craft, however it is driven.
On the French part a prefectoral order is laid over it, arrêté n° DDT/STC/PLL/2015-0202 of 23 June 2015, consolidated on 22 June 2021. Its art. 1.1 names the treaty regulation as binding there too. Then comes art. 6.5, added on 23 July 2020: “L'usage des foils pour les planches nautiques à moteur électrique, qui en sont dotées, n'est autorisé qu'en dehors de la bande de rive”. Foils on electric boards may be used only outside the shore band, and every rider starts from the bank.
Swiss water, the border stretch included, has a third text, the Inland Navigation Ordinance (SR 747.201.1). Its art. 121 para. 5 bars a motor on boards under 2.50 m, and the Federal Office of Transport says that holds with or without a foil. The Federal Council put it in one sentence on 1 February 2023, answering interpellation 22.4313: eFoils are not allowed in Switzerland or on border waters.
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| Point | French water | Swiss water |
|---|---|---|
| Treaty, art. 78d | Applies | Applies |
| Other text | Order art. 6.5: allowed outside the 300 m band | Ordinance art. 121 para. 5: no motor |
| Court ruling | None | Federal Court, 2022: banned |
| Our reading | Unclear | Banned |
Two texts stand side by side on the French shore, and no French judge has said how they fit, so the table calls the position there unclear. On Swiss water the treaty, the ordinance and the court all point one way. The readings in that last row are ours, made as editors and not as lawyers.
A 300 franc fine that went to the Federal Court
The case is 6B_315/2022. On 25 April 2020 a rider set off from a landing stage in the canton of Geneva on what the judges called “un eFoil (ou surf électrique à foil), soit un engin assimilé à un véhicule nautique à moteur”. The fine was 300 francs. He appealed, and on 29 September 2022 the Federal Court rejected the appeal, held the eFoil an “engin similaire” under art. 78d, and added 3,000 francs in court costs.
Consideration 1.6 is the passage that matters for the French shore. The Haute-Savoie order, the court says, does not bind Swiss courts, and “des interprétations différentes ne sont pas d'emblée proscrites”. We take that to be the reason one treaty yields one answer in Thonon and another in Lausanne.
A fine has a ceiling. Art. 48 of the Inland Navigation Act sets one without naming an amount, and art. 106 of the Criminal Code caps fines at 10,000 francs, which is the ceiling we would count on. Motion 24.4515 asks for eFoils to be admitted, but a new ordinance alone would not lift art. 78d, which, as we understand the accord, changes only by an exchange of notes between the two governments. Our Switzerland eFoil guide goes through the other Swiss lakes one at a time.
The 300 m band, the buoys and the kit you must carry
Along the whole French shore a 300 m band carries a 10 km/h limit (art. 3.1, and treaty art. 70 para. 5), and beyond it speed is free. An eFoil does not lift at 10 km/h, a point the Federal Council itself made, so you leave the beach on the hull and cross the band slowly. Nine yellow buoys mark its outer edge from Maxilly to Yvoire. None of them lies off Saint-Gingolph, and between buoys you judge the 300 m by eye or by GPS.
Motor boards are also kept out of the following water under art. 6.5:
- water more than 3.7 km (2 nautical miles) from a shelter;
- the whole lake once a storm warning is issued;
- public ports, and 100 m around navigable passes and public landing stages;
- bathing zones during the bathing season set by the order;
- lake vegetation zones, the Dranse estuary and the Baie de Coudrée reed beds.
The kit is compulsory, school riders included: a helmet, buoyancy at any distance from shore, and a waterproof light that lasts “au moins six heures”.
A few patches of water are closed to everyone, eFoil or not. Just east of the Thonon base the Dranse delta is a nature reserve where “Toute navigation interdite”. West of Thonon the Tougues archaeological site at Chens-sur-Léman, a UNESCO World Heritage site, is shut behind yellow buoys. Unbuoyed shallows and glacial boulders, the zones de vigilance on the order's map, must be crossed at 10 km/h or less, and a foil mast reaches well below the board, so the base is the place to learn where they lie.
Passenger boats in regular service have priority, and you give them 50 m. A yellow light flashing around 40 times a minute is a caution warning, for gusts of 25 to 33 knots; at roughly 90 a minute it becomes a storm warning, and motor boards leave the water at once. Whether a boating licence applies is a question for the base. An electric surfboard without a foil is no way round any of this, since the Federal Council counts it in the Swiss ban alongside the eFoil.
The 1953 line across the lake
The border on the water comes from a Franco-Swiss convention of 25 February 1953. On paper it is a median line; in fact it is a six-sided polygon, with transverse wings at Hermance and Saint-Gingolph. France holds 58 km of the 200 km shoreline, the Chablais shore from Chens-sur-Léman to Saint-Gingolph.
The Morge splits Saint-Gingolph into a French and a Swiss half, and the water east of the border wing there is Swiss. Launch from the French beach and stay on its side of the wing. Once you cross into Swiss water from any French base, art. 78d and the Swiss ordinance apply to you, the way we understand them. Keeping a French shelter within 2 nautical miles mostly keeps you in French water, with two exceptions: the narrow Petit Lac toward Geneva and the water near the Saint-Gingolph wing.
Train to Thonon, boat to Évian, road to Saint-Gingolph
Genève-Cornavin to Thonon-les-Bains is a Léman Express L1 ride, and the line carries on to Évian-les-Bains. Drivers count about 34 km from Cornavin to Thonon and about 62 km to Saint-Gingolph.
Lausanne looks straight across the water at Évian, and that is where CGN line N1 lands; line N2 goes to Thonon. Both stop running under the CGN storm plan. Saint-Gingolph, the base with rental, is the one Montreux and Vevey reach by road, no boat needed.
Lesson, rental or a wing: who goes where
With a motor under your feet the shore is France, full stop, and what remains to choose is the beach and the booking. Take the motor away and the Swiss shore opens up.
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| Rider | Where | Booking |
|---|---|---|
| First time | Thonon or Saint-Gingolph | Group or private lesson |
| Already flies | Saint-Gingolph | Rental after a level check |
| Child from 11 | Saint-Gingolph | Gliss Camp session |
| Own eFoil | French shore only | Art. 6.5 conditions |
| Wing foil | Coppet, Swiss shore | Private wingfoil lesson |
Coming from Geneva, Thonon is the nearer of the two lesson beaches; the rental, and the only one on the lake, is at Saint-Gingolph. An owner's board rides from the French shore on the terms of art. 6.5, with the treaty question as open for you as it is for the schools, and no Swiss beach or port is a legal start.
A wing has no motor, so it falls outside art. 121 para. 5 on our reading, and the Swiss shore is where to take one. At the Plage des Rocailles in Coppet, the École de Voile de Terre Sainte gives private wingfoil lessons from age 16 in one-hour modules, with helmet, impact vest and wetsuit provided. Geneva's city water is the exception: the canton bans wingfoils below the line from Port-Noir to the Perle-du-Lac landing stage. Our wingfoil guide to Switzerland lists more Swiss wing water, lake by lake.
Winds with names, and water near 8 °C
The winds on this lake carry names of their own. MeteoSwiss describes the two main ones as “la bise qui souffle du nord-est, et le Vent qui est le plus souvent du sud-ouest”. The bise owns the first half of the year, spring above all, and can blow for days on end. Settled summer weather brings breezes of 5 to 10 knots, weak on the French shore, and a beginner is most likely to find flat water then.
Then there are the bornan and the vaudaire. The bornan can hit the Grand Lac off Thonon at 30 to 40 knots, and the vaudaire comes down the Rhône valley onto the Haut Lac without much notice. Cumulus building over the Savoy Prealps is the sign to head in.
CIPEL put the top 10 m mid-lake at a winter mean of about 8 °C for 2025 to 2026, and at around 21 °C on 8 September 2025, so the wetsuit in the lesson price is there for a reason. The emergency numbers are 117 in Switzerland and 112 across Europe.
Annecy and Bourget are closed, Cannobio is open
To the south, Lac d'Annecy and Lac du Bourget are closed to eFoils, and the French bases that do take a board are in our France eFoil guide. From the Swiss side the nearest Italian lessons are at Cannobio on Lake Maggiore, under Italian rules. Our eFoil rental guide describes what a first lesson involves, wherever you take it.
