The first one is always a little different. There’s no template to follow, no previous events to point to. You just have to believe that the idea is good enough and build it.

Nordic Happiness Summit 2025 was that first one, held at Hanaholmen in Espoo, just outside of Helsinki, in early spring 2025. Around 250 people showed up, which, given that the event had existed only as an idea a few months earlier, felt quietly remarkable.

Behind the scenes, the event was pulled together by a team that was almost entirely made up of students from Hanken School of Economics. That’s more than a footnote in our opinion, it’s a central part of what Nordic Happiness Summit is.

The venue helped too. Hanaholmen, a Nordic cultural centre sitting on a small peninsula between Espoo and Helsinki, gave the first summit a quality no hotel ballroom could have manufactured: a sense of place, and a certain calm that made the conversations feel less like panels and more like a discussion.

Nordic Happiness Summit 2025 was small by design and large in ambition. It proved that the idea worked. Everything since has been built on that.