Jukola is the best sports event in the world
The start of Jukola, 2026 / Yle's broadcast
Last Saturday — June 13th 2026 — (at least) three important sports events took place: Knicks beat Spurs to win the NBA title, four matches were played in the FIFA World Cup and most importantly, Jukola orienteering relay was ran.
Jukola is an event that includes two competitions: Venla, the women's relay that's run during the day and the namesake relay Jukola which is open for everyone and starts at 23.00 and is run throughout the night.
Often during the Olympics, a discussion comes up where people say that there should be an average person competing to provide context to how good the best in the world are. Jukola has that but in good spirit. Every year, more than 10 000 people competes in it: the range goes from world champions to hobbyists to all the way to people who have very limited experience of orienteering.
The start of the relay, as seen in the photo above, is part of the magic. It's quite an experience when almost 2000 people, wearing headlights, start at the same time and run into the forest in a long continuous line of light. Then, roughly 8 hours later, the best teams cross the finish line after 7 legs and around 80 kilometers of orienteering. And then, many more hours later the last teams arrive.
I've been there twice in person and have watched it from tv or listened from radio most years of my life. In 1993, as a five year old kid, I was running around the venue and fell in love with the event. In 2015, I was a volunteer helping organise the event and it was really cool. Most years though, I watch it from tv.
Jukola broadcast is a very different broadcast from most other sports events. There's a lot of great discussions and interviews during the broadcast: they interview people who designed the routes, former top level orienteers, people who are not professionals but have come there for years and so on. That's quite usual. But then they also interview the orienteers in the forest. Obviously not the people who are competing for top places but the hobbyists.
Here's another fun one.
Broadcast right before the first relay baton handoff. It's dark. / Yle's broadcast
Even though Finnish summer at that time of the year has almost nightless nights (depending on the location), at some points it gets dark, especially in conditions like this year when it was pouring rain all day. It's quite something to watch TV where it's mostly dark and every now and then headlights appear from the darkness and move towards the camera, only to soon disappear into the darkness again.