Man­isha, a doc­tor orig­i­nal­ly from Nepal, got mar­ried in 2021 and moved to Fin­land with her hus­band. Despite know­ing lit­tle about the coun­try, Oulu quick­ly felt like home. After the busy streets of Kath­man­du and the qui­et of the Mal­dives, Man­isha says that Oulu’s bal­ance brought her peace.

Oulu is com­pet­ing with Bra­ga (Por­tu­gal) and Linz (Aus­tria) for the title of most inno­v­a­tive Euro­pean city in the cat­e­go­ry of cities with less than 250,000 inhab­i­tants. The win­ner of the com­pe­ti­tion will be announced on 13 Novem­ber in Lis­bon, the Inno­va­tion Cap­i­tal 2023.

The third Oulu2026 mur­al has been com­plet­ed in Myl­ly­o­ja, Oulu! The art­work was exe­cut­ed by Ital­ian artist Fabio Petani. Oulu2026 murals are exe­cut­ed annu­al­ly in dif­fer­ent parts of Oulu as part of the jour­ney towards Oulu’s Euro­pean Cap­i­tal of Cul­ture year 2026.

Autumn is an excel­lent time to vis­it the stun­ning nature des­ti­na­tions of the Oulu region. Are you more of an inde­pen­dent adven­tur­er, or one to enjoy an easy trip to a close-by nature site? Don’t wor­ry – Oulu has it all.

The City of Oulu has pre­sent­ed to the Gov­ern­ment its ini­tia­tive to seek a NATO Cen­tre of Excel­lence (CoE) in Oulu. Oulu already hosts the accel­er­a­tor and test cen­tre for NATO’s DIANA pro­gramme and leads an ecosys­tem of 5G and 6G research and indus­try in Europe.

Accord­ing to the annu­al rank­ing con­duct­ed by the Insti­tute for Qual­i­ty of Life, Oulu is now the 13th hap­pi­est city in the world. The fac­tors ana­lyzed in the Hap­py City Index com­par­i­son include, for exam­ple, edu­ca­tion­al sys­tem, pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, and cit­i­zen par­tic­i­pa­tion.