International Sauna Congress: The Future of Sauna on Display in Oslo

I spent the better part of a week in Oslo immersed in sauna research, sauna culture, sauna people, and a whole lot of time on the bench with like minded thermal enthusiasts.

First came the 1st International Heat Therapy Research Symposium, hosted by the Sauna Research Foundation (SRF) at The Well. Then came the International Sauna Congress, September 24–26, bringing together over 500 researchers, builders, architects, wellness professionals, sauna leaders, and enthusiasts from around the world.

It was a pretty remarkable window into where sauna is headed. And I came home thinking: sauna has officially arrived. Now it’s on us to keep it real.

The Research Gets Serious

The SRF symposium was the quiet before the storm.

The Sauna Research Foundation convened its inaugural research consensus meeting at The Well, launching a formal Delphi process intended to establish shared definitions, terminology, research methods, and priorities for sauna and heat-therapy research. The working group includes 21 researchers from 14 institutions across nine countries, with 15 attending in person.

I was fortunate to be in the room for those closed-door sessions.

And honestly, there were several pinch-me moments.

Researchers from different disciplines and countries sat around the table and gently wrestled with some pretty fundamental questions: What exactly do we mean when we say “sauna”? How should heat exposure be defined and reported? What terminology should everyone use? What should future studies actually measure? It’s as if the collective consciousness in the room has brought us all together for a technical yet important purpose. (Eg. differentiating sauna from other forms of heat therapy research).

Fellow SRF board member and lead scientist Earric Lee deserves enormous credit for helping bring this group together. There was no grandstanding. No academic peacocking. No turf wars. I was humbled to be amongst such smart people sharing important ideas. And impressed at how a group of people can be so productive when ego is checked at the front desk (or maybe doesn’t exist at all).

Watching the Delphi groundwork take shape (language, hierarchy, mapping, methodology) was a reminder that sometimes the most important work is also the least glamorous. Before we can compare studies, we need to agree on what we’re actually studying.

The Well deserves a huge tip of the hat, too. Its generosity and support made the gathering possible and helped create the environment for this work to happen, with Lasse Eriksen, Norwegian sauna and wellness leader, ambassadoring our attendance.

This is the kind of infrastructure and organization sauna research is ripe for now. In many ways, the seeds were planted years ago—including during my 2019 Sauna Talk conversation with Dr. Jari Laukkanen, when we first explored the growing body of research around sauna and health. That conversation now feels like an early glimpse of where this work is now going.

And it is exactly what SRF was created to help build.

Sauna Diplomacy

The Finnish Embassy gathering Wednesday evening before the Congress offered a completely different glimpse into the sauna ecosystem.

I joined a small group of invited guests for a reception that felt part diplomatic gathering, part sauna family reunion. Finland’s newly appointed ambassador to Norway, Tanja Jääskeläinen, warmly welcomed invited sauna guests, while longtime ISA president Risto Elomaa and others helped connect the dots between Finland’s deep sauna heritage and the rapidly expanding global movement. Jääskeläinen began her posting in Oslo on September 1, 2026.

Then Mikkel Aaland presented the ambassador with a Sauna Aid towel. Ambassador Jääskeläinen may have been the only one in the room not familiar with Mikkel and his work, but she sure got the message about the mission of Sauna Aid, where we are bringing sauna relief to places of need. The towel gift was a small yet powerfully symbolic gesture, capturing the strength of sauna diplomacy.

Put people in a sauna, strip away the titles and the formalities, and somehow the conversation changes. “There is no war in sauna.”

Oslo Opens the Door

The International Sauna Congress officially opened at Oslo City Hall, the same magnificent room where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded every year.

The acoustics and resonance in the room was not lost on anyone.

Thanks in part to Norwegian Sauna Association secretary general Stig Arild Pettersen’s connections, the sauna world was given a pretty spectacular stage.

And then Mikkel Aaland was honored with a presentation and delivered a riveting reflection on sauna’s past and future. He framed the sauna movement around three pillars: the physical, the social, and the spiritual. Lose one of those pillars and the whole thing gets shaky.

It was a fitting message for a gathering that was about far more than heaters and hot rooms. The opening ceremony also featured Norwegian cultural performances, including three dancers who earned a standing ovation.

There was Norweigan Badstue history in the room and a collective sense that something new and exciting was unfolding.

Sauna Coachella

The original plan was to spend much of the congress at SALT, Oslo’s wonderfully weird waterfront art-and-culture village: a collection of giant timber structures mixing sauna, music, food, art, and nightlife.

Permitting problems forced the organizers to pivot to Rebel Oslo, a modern, industrial-feeling conference and event center in downtown Oslo.

As it turned out, it was a pretty damn good Plan B.

For two days, more than 500 sauna people moved through four stages covering Sauna & Health, Global Sauna Culture, Architecture/Technology & Sustainability, and Sauna LIVE. The first three offered traditional presentations and panels; Sauna LIVE was deliberately different—short conversations, interviews, films, podcasts, and books, with no slides and no lectures.

We filed around he three level event center like cultural ants, filling our minds with a full slate of ideas. Health researchers discussed the growing evidence around heat exposure and human health. Cultural sessions explored the wildly different ways sauna is practiced around the world. Architects, builders, and technology people wrestled with how to build better, more sustainable sauna environments.

And then there was the human side. It happens to me with every gathering like this. I wish I could be in four places at one time. 9:30 am Saturday, as example:

At 9:30 AM Saturday, September 26, 2026, the three main stages had:

1. Global Sauna Culture: Becky Pelkonen — “Sauna as Common Good: How the Boom Can Become a Regenerative Force for Communities Across the Globe.” Becky has written for SaunaTimes and has a very clear and conscious approach to sauna in the public domain.
2. Sauna & Health: Ashley Mason — “Warming Up to a New Paradigm in Mental Health Treatment.” I am a huge Ashley fan, and consider her a good friend, and leader in this space, sharing work together for the Sauna Research Foundation.
3. Architecture, Technology & Sustainability: Levi Westerveld — “Sauna as Third Places: When Maps and Communities Come Together.” Levi and I developed the SaunaTimes map together, giving birth to Sauna Circuits.
4. Sauna LIVE as the fourth stage, Sauna Channel’s “Fire Between the Fjords — Norway’s Sauna Revival.”

The whole layered confusion in my mind reminded me of attending several Coachella music festivals over the years. I’d study the programming of whose on where and when at the various stages, and have to make some quick decisions. Like at a multi stage music festival, instead of scattering from room to room, I took a deep Wim Hof breathe and reassured myself that “wherever you go, there you are” – Jon Kabat-Zinn, and took in what I could at that moment.

Oslo: The Floating Sauna Capital

The evenings were where everything came together.

Friday night took us down to the Oslo waterfront and into the city’s extraordinary floating sauna scene. Oslo Sauna Association, Pust, KOK, and others have created what feels like an entirely new urban sauna ecosystem. The congress program called it the city’s iconic floating sauna villages—and that’s not much of an exaggeration.

At night, the harbor became a sauna village.

Hot sauna. Cold plunge. Harbor view. Conversation. Repeat.

And then I noticed something underneath the whole thing.

Mussels.

Thousands of blue mussels hang beneath some of the floating sauna installations in the Oslo harbor, acting as living water filters, collectively filtering and cleaning millions of liters of fjord water every day. The ecological work happening underneath the saunas creating a living breathing healthy ecosystem, much like the microclimates within the hot rooms above, with hundreds of sauna bathers spontaneously chatting on the bench from around the world, filtering out the noise, and breathing fresh new ideas of friendship and collaboration.

Most of us were enthralled by the clear, brackish Oslo Fjord, ever present everywhere, just steps and a dive in from any one of the 20-plus sauna doors in the floating sauna village harbour. The water temperature was cool and wickedly cleansing and refreshing. Note to anyone looking to organize a sauna village or festival gathering: access to fresh cold water immersion is a simple key element: As we know, with sauna and cold swimming, one plus one equals three.

Three Things I Came Home Thinking About

1. Sauna is going global

The Oslo congress made that unmistakable. This isn’t just Finland, as keepers of the flame, exporting a tradition anymore. Thermal enthusiasts from around the world are adapting sauna to their own cultures, cities, climates, architecture, and communities.

2. The science is catching up

The SRF symposium may ultimately prove to be one of the most important things that happened in Oslo. There is enormous interest in sauna research. Now researchers are working toward common definitions, better methodology, and a coordinated research agenda. That’s how a field grows up. And we have the right people and processes in place.

3. The sauna boom is here, and we get to keep it real

SRF is helping build the research infrastructure. Sauna Aid is helping build access, bringing mobile saunas and support to people affected by disasters and other crises. And the people gathered in Oslo seemed to share a bigger realization: sauna can be transformative, and when asked from the audience on how to deal with headwinds, responded with “working together in collaboration is the key.”

Sauna has joined the mix of wellness products and offerings. And with this, unfortunately, there’s plenty of pollution and garbage floating around the sauna waters. For example, influencers and marketers are creating and monetizing an ever-growing collection of adjunct gimmick products, and infrared cabin facilities labeled as “sauna” are popping up in strip malls.

But like the blue mussels beneath Oslo Harbor, this past week, more than 500 sauna enthusiasts gathered at the International Sauna Congress with a shared commitment to keep this space clean, vibrant, and real, not just for today, but for generations to come.