Category: News

This year, the festival continues its popular initiative of offering free bus transport to nearly all of the concerts taking place outside Vaasa.

On three of the departures, a guide will join the journey. During the trip, you will either receive an introduction to the music you are about to hear or learn fascinating historical facts about the destination. The concert experience begins already on the bus.

All buses depart from Vaasa City Hall.

The buses depart as following:

July 23th, Opening Concert: at 18:30

July 24th, Idyl: at 17:15, with guid

July 25th, Carmen Y María de Buenos Aires: at 14:00, with guid – Please note! There is an option to hop off on the way back in order to attend the concert in Replot Church.

July 26th, Re:Vision: at 14:20

July 27th, Rodeo & Rhapsody (Vähäkyrö): at 17:10, with guid

Transportation back to Vaasa City Hall after the end of each concert.

The childcare service introduced last year will continue during the 2026 festival.

We offer free childcare during the Fest Concert and the concert with Vasas flora och fauna. While parents enjoy the performance, children can play and do crafts in a safe and welcoming environment.

The childcare is supervised by professional child carers. Places are limited and advance registration is required.

Please register in advance via email: info@kmf.fi.

In addition to its artistic theme, Korsholm Music Festival has a yearly undertheme about a sustainability topic. With the help of the undertheme we want to take part in social dialogue as well as reflect on and further improve our actions. 

The 2026 undertheme is AI & Sustainability.

AI’s Environmental Impact

The use of AI affects our environment with is energy and water consumption:

• One Google search (without AI) consumes 0,3 kilowatt-hours of energy, whereas a search with ChatGPT consumes 2,9 kilowatt-hours, which is almost 10 times more.
• A chain of circa 20-50 questions and responses with ChatGPT (GPT-3) consumes approximately half a liter of water.
• According to a late 2025 analysis every video produced with the Sora 2 AI model consumes 1 kilowatt-hour of energy, 4 liters of water and produces 466 grams of carbon dioxide emissions. 

Source: Akepa. January 2026. Environmental impact of generative AI – 30+ stats & facts. Web page. Referenced 19.5.2026. https://thesustainableagency.com/blog/environmental-impact-of-generative-ai/

These sums can feel small, but as AI becomes a routine in the everyday lives of millions of people, the emissions start quickly piling up.

Avoiding AI Has Not Negatively Affected the Festival Production

This year the production of Korsholm Music Festival has set an aim to use AI as little as possible. In practice it looks, for example, like this:

• In Google searches the AI summary is filtered out
• The Music Festival’s communication and its translations are created with minimal help from AI
• The graphic and visual elements are self-created or commissioned from a graphic designer. The graphic look of the 2026 program is designed by Andrei Palomäki.
• When using stock photography, pictures created by AI are filtered out when there is an option to do so.

Results:

• The production of the Music Festival has proceeded in its usual schedule
• The most direct impact can be seen in translating texts, which is clearly slower without AI. However, the time spent in translating is a good investment, since the production team will need fluent Finnish, Swedish and English also in situations, where relying on AI is not possible. Translating without AI maintains language proficiency effectively.
• Searching and viewing information without Google’s AI summary is more critical, which is useful as misinformation becomes more and more common.

It Is Better To Do Something Than Nothing At All

The nature of the work done at Korsholm Music Festival allows avoiding AI. That is not a realistic option in everyone’s jobs, and it is not our intention to act as moralists.

Instead, we would like to take part in the discussion on this topic and ask, is AI truly, in all areas, as indispensable a tool as it is made out to be?

It is not always possible to avoid AI in the Music Festival’s production, either: in many digital tools AI has already been integrated as a fixed part of the platform without an option to filter it out. 

As in all environmental work, however, imperfect action is better than perfect inaction. If you can only partly do something, it is still better than not doing it at all. 

“Imperfect action is better than perfect inaction.”

– Harry S Truman

Would you like to come to Korsholm Music Festival, but are in a tight financial situation, and can therefore not buy tickets? Korsholm Music Festival is a part of The Wellbeing Services County of Ostrobothnia’s Kaikukortti-network. If you have Kaikukortti, you can get tickets to our concerts free of charge. If you have children or grandchildren that are under 18 years old, you can get tickets also for them, when you are going to a concert together. 

With Kaikukortti you can get tickets to all of Korsholm Music Festival’s concerts, apart from the concert Carmen y María de Buenos Aires, which was exceptionally almost fully booked already before Korsholm Music Festival’s Kaikukortti tickets were released. There are 10 Kaikukortti tickets available per concert.

In order to get a Kaikukortti ticket you need to make a reservation at info@kmf.fi, and collect the ticket by showing your Kaikukortti at Korsholm Music Festival’s office at Vaasa City Hall (Senaatinkatu 1, 65100 Vaasa), within 3 days of making the reservation.

During the festival itself 22.-29.7.2026 you can come directly to the festival office’s tickets sales booth at Vaasa City hall for Kaikukortti tickets, without reserving in advance.

In addition to us there are ca. 30 Kaikukortti destinations in the The Wellbeing Services County of Ostrobothnia’s Kaikukortti-network.

Kaikukortti is in use in multiple districts in Finland. With Kaikukortti you can get event tickets and course admissions free of charge to all destinations, that are a part of the nationwide Kaikukortti network. You can explore the different regions’ Kaikukortti selection more at Kaikukortti’s website at https://kaikukortti.fi/en/kaikukortti-card/localities/

More info: https://www.vaasa.fi/en/see-and-experience/culture-in-vaasa-and-vaasa-region/culture-services/kaikukortti-2/ 

Kaikukortti nationwide on Facebook: facebook.com/kaikukortti/

More info on Kaikukortti nationwidei: kaikukortti.fi

For us, environmental responsibility means concrete actions in our own activities. We are committed to conserving natural resources and increasing our positive impact on the environment. As proof of this, we have been granted the EcoCompass certificate.

Our environmental promise:

1. We take environmental responsibility into account in our acquisitions and while choosing collaboration partners.
2. We communicate about our work for environmental responsibility and achievements. We encourage our audience, partners and artists to act according to our values. 
3. We contribute to environmental responsibility through our own network.

What is EcoCompass?

Korsholm Music Festival has been granted the EcoCompass certificate. It requires building an environmental program and adhering to it in the organisation’s year-round operations. An independent third party audits the environmental program every three years. The next audit for Korsholm Music Festival is this summer.

What does EcoCompass mean in practice?

As part of its environmental program Korsholm Music Festival does, among others, the following things:

• Favors travel by train and boat instead of plane and car in domestic travel
• Rents only electric cars when it comes to passenger cars
• Provides free bus transport for the audience to concerts outside Vaasa city center
• Buys technological equipment primarily second hand
• Instead of concert flowers, makes a donation to a sustainability focused organisation
• Does not use AI as a primary tool

Five concerts with the price of three!

The serial ticket includes 5 optional concerts at Korsholm Music Festival.

The serial ticket must always be changed into a seated ticket in the online store before the concert by using the code in the serial ticket.

Give in to the charm of music with Korsholm Music Festival’s affordable festival pass! After buying a pass you get one ticket for each concert in your email.  You can find the festival pass in the webshop under any of Korsholm Music Festival’s concerts.

Please note! The festival pass includes the 16:00 show of A Day at the Circus! In Michael Bleu sings Soul Classics the placenumber for a passholder is in the hall, not in the balcony. Of Rodeo & Rhapsody the concert in Vähäkyrö is included in the pass. If you would like to go to the concert in Kurikka instead, please contact info@kmf.fi 

Concert No 9 in Salteriet was reserved out in May 2026, and for that reason the festival pass doesn’t reserve a seat in that concert anymore. If you have a festival pass and would like to come to the concert in Salteriet, please contact info@kmf.fi or pop by at the festival office at Vaasa City Hall.