World Sauna Forum 2026: Kotisauna on the Global Community Sauna Panel

Most people's reaction when we mention this is some version of "wait, that's a real thing?" Fair. A yearly gathering of sauna operators, researchers, and stewards from around the world, in Jyväskylä, Finland, arguing about how to protect public and community sauna, does sound made up. It isn't. This year World Sauna Forum had more than 400 registered attendees from 36 countries, and featured 35 speakers working across the industry and wellbeing research. This past June, we had the privilege of being part of it.

Charlie Duckworth, Freddie Mehigan and Polly Wilson of Community Sauna Baths in the UK, Becky Pelkonen of Kamu Sauna here in Canada, and Ian Whelan of Fad Saoil Saunas in Ireland.

We were invited onto a panel called Sauna for Society. The purpose wasn't a nice photo op or a chance to swap tips. It was the start of something more deliberate: a coalition, a global partnership of people trying to protect public sauna as it grows, before growth turns it into something unrecognizable.

That's worth sitting with for a second. Sauna is having a moment everywhere right now, and a moment like that can go two ways. It can get diluted into whatever sells fastest, or the people who actually understand what makes it work can get in a room together and figure out how to keep it intact. That's what this panel was for.

And the room we were in was not a small thing to be part of. Mikkel Aaland, who has spent decades documenting bathing culture around the world, was there. So was Dalva Lamminmäki, a Finnish folklorist and doctoral researcher studying sauna traditions passed down through generations. So was Eda Veeroja, a smoke sauna steward from Estonia, carrying forward a practice that's older than most institutions. These are not wellness influencers. These are people who have given their working lives to understanding what sauna actually is, and why it matters that it doesn't get flattened into a trend.

None of this happens without Sauna from Finland, who host the forum every year and quietly do the work of holding this global community together. We're grateful to them for the invitation, and for building a gathering that takes sauna this seriously in the first place.

The panel was one part of a few very full days. The rest of the forum was a reminder of how much is happening in this world that never reaches Toronto. Researchers presenting current health findings on heat exposure and recovery. Operators and stewards sharing how sauna culture looks in their own countries, all of them different, none of them lesser. Vendors showing genuinely cutting-edge sauna technology, the kind that will take years to reach North America. And, maybe most memorably, the chance to actually experience some of the most culturally rich sauna rituals in the world firsthand, not read about them. That's not something you walk away from unchanged.

We came home with more than a nice memory. We came home with a clearer sense of what we're actually protecting, and why it's worth being stubborn about it. Public and community sauna only works if it stays culturally authentic and stays accessible, at the same time, without one being sacrificed for the other. It's easy to build something beautiful and expensive. It's much harder to build something that's true to where sauna comes from and still lets anyone walk through the door.

That's the job. Not chasing the biggest, shiniest version of sauna Toronto has ever seen. Building the kind of place that, a hundred years from now, still looks like what a sauna has always been: heat, water, and people who show up for each other.

We're proud to have had a seat at that table. We're more motivated than ever to keep earning it.