A method for the determination of geosmin and 2-methylisoborneol (MIB) in water by solid-phase microextraction (SPME) is presented. Various SPME fibre chemistries have been compared for their efficiency in extracting MIB from water. Extraction conditions including the extraction time and temperature have been optimised. A 30 ml water sample is extracted for 20 min at 60 °C using a divinylbenzene fibre, and the extract analysed by gas chromatography with ion-trap mass spectrometry detection. d₅-Geosmin and d₃-MIB are added as internal standards to compensate for any variability in the SPME process which is not carried out to equilibrium. Chemical ionisation, using acetonitrile as the reagent gas, was found to give superior sensitivity to electron impact ionisation (EI) for the detection of MIB. EI was used as the ionisation mode for detection of geosmin. The method shows good linearity over the concentration range 5–40 ng l^–1 and gives detection limits of 1 ng l^–1 for both geosmin and MIB. Recovery (93–110%) and precision (3–12%) over this concentration range, for both raw and treated drinking waters, are comparable to currently employed methods such as closed-loop stripping analysis (CLSA). The method offers the advantage of being simple to use, with much shorter analysis times in comparison to CLSA.