Air Guitar World Championships

The unlikely event that put Oulu on the global map: a deadly serious international competition held in late August every year, in which contestants from around the world perform two 60-second rounds of air guitar in front of an audience and a panel of expert judges. Competitors are scored on technical merit, stage presence, and airness.

Spectacle, comedy, and a particular Finnish kind of self-deprecation. Tickets sell out months ahead.

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The Air Guitar World Championships started as a joke event at the Oulu Music Video Festival in 1996 but has run every year since. The official philosophy is that air guitar promotes world peace — the logic being that whoever is playing air guitar cannot be holding a gun.

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