Which canal in Germany connects the North Sea to the Baltic Sea?

The canal in Germany that connects the North Sea to the Baltic Sea is the Kiel Canal. It crosses the German state of Schleswig-Holstein from Brunsbüttel on the Elbe estuary to Holtenau near Kiel, allowing ships to avoid sailing around Denmark and the Jutland Peninsula.

Construction began in 1887, and the canal officially opened in 1895 under the name Kaiser-Wilhelm-Kanal. Germany later widened it between 1907 and 1914, partly to accommodate larger naval vessels. Today, the waterway is about 98 kilometres long and remains one of the world's busiest artificial ship canals.

The canal can shorten a voyage between the two seas by approximately 460 kilometres. It is not the same as the nearby Danish Straits, which are natural passages, or the Panama and Suez canals, which connect different oceans and regions. Its German name, Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, literally means North–Baltic Sea Canal and is still widely used locally.