My Oulu: Air Guitar World Championships brought even more attention to Oulu than usual

This year, media coverage of the Air Guitar World Championships was estimated to reach 1.45 billion people from America to Australia. The advertising value of the exposure exceeded 8 million Euros. The figures are based on Meltwater’s media monitoring during the last two weeks of August 2025.

International news agencies Associated Press (AP) and the European Broadcasting Union (EBU) distributed the live broadcast to their clients.

International media interest in the Air Guitar World Championships is an annual phenomenon, but this year the monitoring figures doubled. One contributing factor was the extensive coverage by British journalists of the first documented instance of air guitar playing in England, which took place even before Woodstock. This year, British media in particular – led by the BBC – followed the air guitar phenomenon from the perspectives of popular culture history and the contemporary competition.

Reports about the Air Guitar World Championships naturally cover the competition results, but they also consistently highlight Oulu as an exotic and vibrant northern Finnish city. Increasingly, media stories emphasise the core purpose of the World Championships: promoting world peace.

“Even though we serve the media quickly with comprehensive video and image material and a live broadcast, this unique event in a special city continues to attract international journalists to attend in person year after year. And when they come, they are completely won over by the air guitar atmosphere in Oulu”, says Pia Alatorvinen, Executive Director of Oulu August Festivals. The Air Guitar World Championships is part of the Oulu August Festivals network.

In addition to reputation-building, the event enhances the city’s appeal as a destination to visit and live in. The City of Oulu is currently examining the impacts of events on the region through survey research. The Air Guitar World Championships achieved record-high scores from respondents in terms of the social indicator.

The social indicator includes satisfaction with the event, willingness to recommend it, and whether the respondent would attend again. On average, event-related social indicators tend to be slightly above 80 %. For the Air Guitar World Championships, the figure was an impressive 95 %.

“Furthermore, over 90 per cent of respondents felt that the event increases the attractiveness and vitality of the area and strengthens their willingness to live in Oulu. Of course, we already knew this ourselves, but now we also have numbers to prove it. Next year, when the Air Guitar World Championships celebrates its 30th anniversary, it will continue to be a unique Oulu attraction for both residents and visitors. This demonstrates that cultural events are vital builders of urban identity and quality of life”, Alatorvinen states.