UPDATE July 2016: The Malmö City Card is no longer available. See our main Malmö guide for money-saving ideas.
Just like Stockholm and Gothenburg, Malmö has launched its own city card offering discounts on attractions, hotels and restaurants around town. Should you bother buying it? A lot depends on how long you’re staying for. Let’s get down to the nitty-gritty.
What is the Malmö City Card?
Well, it isn’t actually a card. It’s more like a little booklet that entitles you to special offers around Malmö. You can also download it as an app for iPhone or Android – but more on that later.
What’s included?
There are literally hundreds of offers included with the Malmö City Card, but most are small, 10–20% discounts at local businesses, from nail bars to dry-cleaning shops. Much more useful for tourists are the big, headline deals. These include:
• Half-price admission to Malmöhus Castle
• 20% off the entry fee at Moderna Museet Malmö
• 24 hours of free parking
• 10% off local taxi rides
• Money off room rates at central hotels
How much does it cost?
100 SEK per person – it’s the same price regardless of whether you buy the booklet or use the app.
How long does the city card last?
Unlike the city cards in Stockholm and Gothenburg, which are valid for a set number of days, Malmö’s version is yours for the whole summer or winter season. So if you buy it in the spring it’ll last right until the end of August.
Is it worth buying the Malmö City Card?
If you’re planning on staying in Malmö for a few days, we think the city card is definitely worth buying. Even if you only pay for one city card (100 SEK), you can then get 15% off the cost of a double room at Comfort Hotel Malmö, one of our top picks for city-centre sleeps. Two nights there will usually cost you 1000 SEK or more, so bag the 15% discount on that price and you’ve already made your money back.
Note that some hotels only offer these kinds of discounts on weekends, so check the terms for each hotel carefully before buying the city card.
On the other hand, if you’re in Malmö on a day trip from Copenhagen, you might struggle to make the city card pay for itself. Half-price admission to Malmöhus Castle might sound great on paper, but it’s only really a saving of 20 SEK. So unless you’re hoping to do lots of shopping, get your dry cleaning done, or take a taxi all the way back to Copenhagen, it might work out to be poor value.
Where to buy the Malmö City Card
You’ll see the paper version of the Malmö City Card on sale at hotels and shops across town. You can also pick one up from the tourist information office on Skeppsbron, just across from the main train station.
If you’d rather use your phone, the Malmö City Card app is available through the App Store and Google Play. It’s free to download but you’ll then need to activate it to benefit from the discounts. Unfortunately this is an unnecessarily complex process – you’ll need to send a text message from a Swedish mobile phone in order to buy the activation code, or physically visit one of the hotels and shops in town (or the tourist office) to get hold of a code.
To use the discounts at each attraction or retailer, either hand over your paper coupon or show your phone – in that case, staff will press the relevant ‘use special offer’ button, after which the discount will expire.
Here’s the address for the tourist office:
Malmö Tourist Office
Börshuset, Skeppsbron 2
Malmö
+46 403 412 00
malmotown.com
Mon–Fri 9am–5pm, Sat & Sun 10am–2.30pm
Looking for somewhere to stay in Malmö? Check out our independent hotel and hostel reviews. We’ve also got detailed guides to all of the city’s main attractions to help you plan your trip.
Last updated: May 2015
