Kajaani gains rare concentration of large-scale murals

Kajaani is set to become a notable hub for murals as the Concreate Urban Art Festival nears completion, with 18 artists—six from Finland and 12 from abroad—creating eight large murals on the ends of apartment buildings and artwork in three nearby underpasses in the Vesitorninmäki area.

The festival, organized by Helsinki Urban Art, marks its first event outside the capital region, following previous editions in Helsinki’s Pasila in 2020 and Espoo’s Kera in 2021. This year’s event is part of the Oulu 2026 European Capital of Culture program and Kajaani’s 375th-anniversary celebrations.

What makes the project unusual is the density of the artworks: the northernmost and southernmost murals are just 200 meters apart. Jaakko Blomberg, the Kajaani-born executive director of Helsinki Urban Art, noted that no other area in Finland has such a concentrated display of urban art.

The festival runs from July 6 to 19. Among the participating artists is Dutch muralist Jonna Bo Lammers, who typically works in urban settings but found the proximity to trees in Kajaani a novel experience. Finnish artist Viivi Vierinen contributed a piece inspired by her grandmother’s stories of evacuation, depicting her grandmother with her cattle.