The city of events
Welcome to organise events in Kuopio!
Kuopio is a big city in a compact size. The event venues and facilities are located in the heart of the City, and they are easily accessible. Convenient city bikes, well-functioning public transport, and walking distances enable smooth mobility in the City Centre. Air services and rail connections bring in visitors from further away, as the airport is only about 20 minutes away from the City Centre.
As the central city of Eastern Finland, Kuopio is a hub for a larger region of approximately one million inhabitants, 15,000 of whom are students. The City invests heavily in well-being services, event venues, and preconditions for organising different kinds of events. The next major investment is the Savilahti Luola (Savilahti Cave) sports and event center, scheduled to be completed in 2024. The renovated theatre and music centre, the new Lumit Kuopio Senior High School of Arts, the new museum/library, and second largest swimming pool in Finland can also be used as venues for events.
And then there’s Tahko, the one-of-a-kind year-round event village with top-of-the-line facilities and services and accommodation options to suit every taste. Tahko is located just 45 minutes away from downtown Kuopio, about half an hour from the airport. Tahko plays host to various entertainment and sports events, including the 2025 world championships in orienteering.
While participation in the event is the undeniable highlight of any visit, the City’s versatile service offering helps make the entire trip an unforgettable experience! Visitors can, for example, explore Kuopio’s rich and versatile nature, which also provides for a wide range of outdoor activities throughout the year. Culture lovers in particular enjoy the City’s museums, concerts, and restaurants, which offer alternatives for many tastes.
Although the setting has a major impact on the success of an event, what is really important are the encounters: the meetings between the participants of the event and the residents of Kuopio. Residents make the city, and the heart and soul of Kuopio are our friendly and talkative locals who want to get to know the visitors and make them feel welcome.
Our aim is for Kuopio to remain an active and dynamic city where people can feel at home. And it seems we have succeeded, as Kuopio is ranked Finland’s second most attractive city! So let’s make sure to keep Kuopio a busy and inspiring event city also in the future.
KIRSI SOININEN
Marketing Director, City of Kuopio
Why should you choose Kuopio?
Kuopio has a reputation of being a good city for organising events – and rightly so. The pleasant and compact city centre enables the organisation of a wide range of events throughout the year. Walking around in the city centre is easy, and travelling to the city from further away is convenient both by car and by means of public transport. The rich and versatile nature of the Kuopio area makes event organisation possible even outside the city centre during all seasons.
Versatile and ever evolving
Kuopio annually hosts a number of different kinds of events, the largest of which attract visitors from all around the world. The versatile event offering has everything from art festivals held annually for decades to completely new sports events, so we can say with some certainty that there really is something for everyone to enjoy.
The City has developed solutions to ensure that outdoor events can be comfortably organised and attended throughout the year, regardless of weather conditions. This helps ensure that Kuopio’s events are not limited to the summer months and to the indoors, but instead, remain versatile and inspiring throughout the year.
Collaboration with event organisers
We want to make sure that events organised in Kuopio are as high-quality as can be. There are currently several projects underway that are related to the development of events, and the aim is to develop Kuopio as a city of events. In the future, it will be even easier to organise high-quality events in the City.
Our event operations experts work in active collaboration with event organisers to make organisation as easy as possible. By providing support for organising and marketing the event, we make sure that even the most challenging arrangements can be made easily and smoothly. In other words, you will not be left alone in solving potential problems; instead, you can turn to us for anything.
Events organised in Kuopio
Every year, Kuopio plays host to events of different sizes, the largest of which attract visitors from around the world. Read more about the international events organised in Kuopio below.
Kuopiorock
Kuopiorock is an annual three-day rock festival organised for the first time in 2003. The line-up is always made up of both national and international top artists. Kuopio passenger harbour served as the venue in the early years of the event, but today, the festival area is located in Väinölänniemi. There are also several club gigs around the city during the festival weekend. The festival has grown over the years, and today, there are several stages and many attractions and activities in the festival area. In recent years, the festival has attracted around 29,000 annual visitors.
Kuopio Dance Festival (Kuopio Tanssii ja Soi)
Kuopio Tanssii ja Soi, internationally known as the Kuopio Dance Festival, is the oldest international dance festival in the Nordic countries. It showcases local culture, increases awareness of art, raises awareness of dancing as a form of art, and promotes well-being by bringing dancing into the lives of the people. Starters, enthusiasts, and professional dancers from Finland and around the world participate in the week-long festival, which has been organised since 1970.
Finland Ice Marathon
Finland Ice Marathon is an outdoor skating event organised annually on the naturally frozen surface of Lake Kallavesi. Participants compete in ice skating, skating with poles, winter cycling, winter running and kick-sledding. Both skating beginners and professionals are welcome to attend, as the lengths of the individual races vary between two and two hundred kilometres. The event has been held in Kuopio since 1984, and the competition currently attracts around 700 participants annually. The ice tracks are actively used by the city residents before and after the competition.
ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival
First held in 2002, the ANTI – Contemporary Art Festival takes the works of Finnish and international artists from their traditional venues to the public spaces around the City of Kuopio for the public to enjoy. Various workshops, seminars, and clubs are also held during the festival week. There is no entrance fee, and every year the works of art reach more than 50,000 people, of whom about 13,000 are active attendees.
International orienteering competitions
In the coming years, Kuopio and Tahko will host several international orienteering events, such as the Orienteering World Cup 2024 and the World Orienteering Championships 2025.