Moomins reading marathon broadcasts drew a combined audience of 1.7 million viewers in Finland over a three-day event on Yle Teema at the start of February 2026, as the public broadcaster marked its approaching 100th anniversary with programming built around “shared moments”. The read-a-thon brought together about 130 guests—from politics, sport, film and music—who each read short sections from nine well-known Moomin books by author and illustrator Tove Jansson.
A three-day broadcast built around familiar voices
Yle framed the marathon as a national, low-threshold cultural event: short readings, many different readers, and a format that worked both as background viewing and as appointment television.
Alongside the linear broadcast on Yle Teema, Yle also made the full marathon available on its streaming service, Yle Areena. Yle said the programme had already accumulated hundreds of thousands of viewing hours online, indicating that the project was designed for audiences who move between traditional TV and on-demand platforms.
From Stubb to Marin: a line-up designed for mass appeal
The list of readers mixed high-profile public figures with entertainers and niche personalities. Finnish President Alexander Stubb and former Prime Minister Sanna Marin were among the most recognisable names, while other appearances included former president Tarja Halonen, performers and TV personalities, and well-known athletes.
Yle’s culture journalists Minna Joenniemi and Hannamari Hoikkala curated the list. They divided each book into scenes and matched excerpts to readers. “The readers were chosen with love and a lot of attention was paid to the details,” Joenniemi said.
The marathon began with a reading by Sophia Jansson, Tove Jansson’s niece and the long-time guardian of the Moomin legacy.
Non-native Finnish speakers as part of the format
The organisers also included readers for whom Finnish is not their mother tongue. That choice added a small but deliberate layer of representation to an otherwise strongly national cultural ritual.
It also reflected the contemporary Finland that public service media is expected to serve: a society shaped by mobility, international work and multilingual everyday life.
Why Yle is leaning on communal TV events in 2026
Yle has presented its 100th anniversary programme as a year of “shared moments”, with projects meant to create common reference points across age groups and media habits.
In that context, a long-format reading marathon is also a strategic choice. It is inexpensive compared with major drama production, it fits both broadcast and streaming distribution, and it can be built around public figures who already have audiences.
A Finnish public-service tradition of collective reading
The Moomins marathon follows a similar format Yle used on Finland’s Independence Day in 2024, when Väinö Linna’s classic war novel The Unknown Soldier (Tuntematon sotilas) was read out over 20 hours.
These projects sit somewhere between literature programming and national ceremony. They also underline a core role of Nordic public broadcasters: creating cultural events that are accessible, non-partisan and widely shared.
The marathon and the wider Moomins anniversary timeline
The broadcast also arrived soon after the Moomins’ 80th anniversary celebrations in 2025, marking the publication of the first Moomin story in 1945. While Yle’s project was formally linked to the broadcaster’s own centenary, the timing helped it tap into broader public attention around Finland’s best-known fictional family.
Across the Nordic region, the Moomins have long functioned as cultural shorthand: gentle humour, existential undertones, and stories about belonging and community. Yle’s reading marathon turned that shorthand into a collective media moment—one that also points to how public service media is trying to remain relevant in an increasingly fragmented attention economy.
