Oulu Arts’ Night will take place on August 14. In recent years, the program has featured two to three hundred events representing numerous fields of art. On the same day, the Literary Art festival Oulu Muusajuhlat and Korttelihaipakka will also be celebrated.
True to its name, the event offers programs from morning until late at night. Some program highlights are already known. The long-standing tradition of Oulu Sinfonia continues with three immersive concerts on the Hupisaari Open-Air Theatre. Hallituskatu will once again host The Long Table Dinner, where people can come together to enjoy good food, music, and each other’s company.
The events span music, dance, and theatre. Visitors can, for example, browse vintage props at Oulu Theatre’s costume flea market or watch and take part in a short improvisation by Impromania. In art, the sky is the limit.
There’s still time to register your own program for the Night of the Arts. Sign up by August 7 through the link below so your event can be included on the event map. Please note: in Oulu's European Capital of Culture year 2026, the Arts’ Night will not be held — instead, there will be a Day Without Art. Welcome to see, experience, participate, and be surprised!
Sign up here for the 2025 Oulu Arts’ Night.
Oulu Arts’ Night takes place again on Thursday, 14 August 2025 in and around Oulu city centre, as part of the Oulu August Festivals. The programme submission form is available here. Event organisers as well as artists of all kinds are also welcome to express their interest via email to the Oulu Arts’ Night Association (ouluntaiteidenyo@gmail.com).
In 2024, around two hundred individual performances and events took place during the Oulu Arts’ Night and a similar scale is anticipated this year as well.
“In recent years, many new types of events and forms of activity have emerged in Oulu’s summer scene, but this doesn’t seem to have lessened people’s enthusiasm to also take part in the Oulu Arts’ Night. Nearly all of the programme for this event is offered free of charge by artists, cultural associations and other contributors to the public. I’m often moved myself by how much our creatives want to give to their community,” says Paavo J. Heinonen, the artistic director of the event.
The Oulu Arts’ Night is produced by Oulu Night of the Arts Association, a joint organisation of around thirty cultural associations based in Oulu. The City of Oulu annually grant the association 12 000 euros in support of organising the event.
Some of the programme has already been confirmed. The official opening speech will take place at noon on Lammassaari island. Once again, the event will conclude at 5:00 AM on Friday morning with a public reading of the final paragraph of James Joyce’s novel Finnegans Wake at Elba. Between these two moments, audiences can enjoy, among other highlights, three performances by Oulu Sinfonia at the Hupisaaret Summer Theatre, Proto Association’s Design Market in Pikisaari, and the Summer Night’s Dinner by Arctic Food Lab in Snellman Park and in Otto Karhi Park.
The full programme of the Oulu Arts’ Night will be published over the summer on the Oulu August Festivals website. A map of the evening’s events will be available in the centre spread of Forum24 newspaper in week 33 of August.
Every year, Oulu Arts Night attracts tens of thousands of people to the diverse world of art in the downtown area of Oulu. Join us this year in making the night surprising and experiential.
Program submissions are already open. For more information: Artistic Director Paavo J. Heinonen, paavojii at gmail.com, phone +358 44 250 1605.
