Finncon 2026

It has been a while since there was a Finncon in Turku. The last one was in 2018. But it is a very lovely city so I was pleased to be able to go back for a few days.

First, however, there was some travel. I flew into Helsinki direct from the Eurocon in Berlin. That gave me a few days in Finland before the con started, which meant visiting friends, starting with Otto and Paula.

On the Tuesday Otto and I visited Kiasma, the modern art museum in Helsinki. There was an exhibition of Sámi art which I had high hopes for on the grounds that the Inuit art I had seen in Toronto was superb. Sadly this did not live up to expectations, though it was very poignant. I’m not sure whether the Sámi don’t have carving traditions similar to the Inuit, of whether they are just so angry about what has been done to them that they don’t want to show anything beautiful. They were angry, and justifiably so.

What I wasn’t expecting was an exhibition of work by the Estonian sculptor, Edith Karlson. She’s very good. I was glad I got to see some of her work, much of which has strongly mythological themes.

On Wednesday I took the train up to Jyväskylä so spend a day or so with Irma and Jussi. And then on Friday morning Irma and I drove down to Turku. Jussi had to work, but he joined us by train later in the day. The hotels in town were quite expensive, so we had booked an apartment that I found on Booking.com that turned out to be really nice (though I’m not sure how I would have managed if I was not travelling with two Finnish-speakers).

Friday afternoon saw me doing my traditional job of interviewing the writer Guests of Honour about their work. Adrian Tchaikovsky was, of course, lovely, and I was pleasantly surprised by Reetta Vuokko-Syrjänen. She’s not a Finnish author that I knew much about, and she does a lot of writing for younger readers, but she’s very smart and totally held her own alongside Adrian. Sadly she has only one work in English translation, a short story in the anthology, The Lion and the Lynx, available from the lovely people at Osuuskumma.

Turku Finncons are held in the university. That means no accommodation on site, though for me there was a just a pleasant 20 minute walk along the river to a bridge and back up again. It also means no big hall for the dealers, which made it hard to work out how many there were. What I will say is that there were a lot. They are spread over two floors in three university buildings, and I’m pretty sure there were more dealers than we had at this year’s Eastercon. Also the good folks from Rosebud had a huge presence, which meant that most of the best recent English language releases were available, along with one table groaning under the weight of Adrian’s very many books.

One programme item that I made a point of attending was the introduction to the Sauútiverse from Xan Van Royen. This is a really interesting project, and not just because it is entirely African. The way in which collaborative worldbuilding is done seems very innovative, and may be useful to me in future projects. Xan is doing a similar programme item for Worldcon, but this time in collaboration with Wole Talabi and Stephen Embleton, who are also members of the Sauútiverse collective. Catch it if you can.

Saturday evening was the Masquerade, and once again I got roped in to chair the jury. Adrian, his wife Annie, and Reeta proved to be very able judges, and the convention provided us with a professional cosplayer who gave valuable insights into the quality of workmanship. We had a really good bunch of contestants as well.

As Finncon regulars will be aware, the Masquerade prizes are normally handed out at the Saturday evening party, held somewhere in town. This is the one thing that did not go well. The venue that the convention had hired did not put on enough staff. By the time that Irma, Jussi and I arrived, there was a massive queue for the bar. So we bailed. Fortunately I had been doing some research and I knew that Turku’s legendary whisky bar was just over the road. They didn’t have any Welsh whisky, but there was plenty of good Scottish stuff on offer.

Sunday saw me on the Eurofandom panel. I didn’t know that I was on it until that morning, and I didn’t know that I was moderating it until I arrived at the panel. Fortunately I had Saija Kyllönen and Carolina Gomez Lagerlöf from ESFS to whom I could just toss questions and get lengthy and authoritative answers. The other panellist was AMP Rodriguez from Portugal who managed to make me even more sad that I can’t go to next year’s Eurocon due to the clash with FantasyCon.

Because Finncon is free to attend, it is always hard to know just how many people were there. Having it spread over three buildings did not help. But Tero reckoned that there were 2 or 3 thousand, which seemed about right. As usual for Finncon, it mostly went very well. We had lovely weather too. Except for one very heavy downpour just as the con was ending. It was almost as if the gods were sad that it was over.

By the way, if you are wondering why there is a platypus in the convention logo, it is all to do with eggs. The convention was the 40th anniversary of Finncon. The theme of the convention was ‘beginnings’. And all of the animals featured in the logo lay eggs. If you want to know more about this, come to my (virtual) panel on creation myths at Worldcon.

Next year Finncon will be in Espoo. I don’t have any details of dates and guests as yet.