In troubled times, Finland’s public broadcaster has an answer: puppies

London: Puppy Live is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a 24/7 livestream of newborn puppies.

And it sometimes seems everyone in Finland is invested.

“It’s a form of stress relief,” said Kalle Kurittu, 32, who lives in Helsinki and has watched for years.

“I love all the puppies equally,” said Mandi Salo, 9, also of Helsinki, who said she was excited when one pup opened its eyes.

Puppy Live (“Pentulive” in Finnish) – is something like The Truman Show for a litter, raised from birth to adoption in front of an adoring public.

Broadcast by Yle, Finland’s public broadcaster, the stream is a phenomenon, with well over 1 million viewers. Now, in its sixth year, the show is going international.

Sweden’s public broadcaster, SVT, has started streaming it. A Dutch broadcaster has bought the rights for a spinoff (with Dutch puppies).

Yle (pronounced OO-lay) has even launched a Puppy Live podcast and, in a very 2026 move, released a prediction-market game to run for the eight weeks of the season. Even though the babies sleep some 20 hours a day, there’s plenty to bet on: How much do they weigh? How long are their tails? Which will grow fastest? Players earn points, and weekly winners get a mug.

At any given minute, the puppies, currently two weeks old, are probably sleeping. They twitch on a purple blanket like furry potatoes. Mostly, nothing much happens.

‘We call it puppy therapy.’

Minttu Hahtola, podcast host

And that’s the point. “I think anyone who is interested in the livestream expects to see sleeping puppies a lot of the time,” said Pietu Ruuttunen, 28, a viewer in the city of Jyvaskyla.

The broadcast is a particularly cute example of “slow” television, a distinctly Nordic genre of easy, idyllic viewing. The Norwegians pioneered the form, broadcasting hours of firewood burning or the view from a moving train. Each year, Swedes flock to a livestream of a moose migration.

And the Finns? They’ve got a lot of options.

There was a livestream of groceries moving down a checkout conveyor belt. Freshwater seals playing in a lake. Ospreys nesting in their eyrie.

At first glance, the feeds could look like a screensaver. The genre is rooted in service television, said Annette Hill, a professor of media and communication studies at Jonkoping University in Sweden.

Because public broadcasters do not need to advertise or sell products, they can invest in programs free from commercial demands. Viewers find it soothing – almost therapeutic.

“That’s what this slow TV does,” Hill said. “It makes you be in the present, and it makes you slow down and stop this frenzy and stop scrolling and stop panicking about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”

This year on Puppy Live there are six puppies, four male and two female. The mother, Hilkka, stays calm even as her progeny kick, thrash, and scramble over one another to nurse. (Veterinarians carefully select and support the mothers, and all the puppies on the show have been born healthy, according to Yle’s website.)

Puppy Live started during the coronavirus pandemic. Finns, like everyone else, needed comfort. (Kurittu said he had “fond memories of coming home drunk just in time to happen upon the mother halfway to a litter”.)

But many also needed a crash course in dogs. Many people stuck at home were suddenly spending more time with their own. Others decided to adopt.

Pirjo Koskinen, the show’s founder, said she had wanted to create something educational and was surprised by the response. “I really didn’t know that this would be so meaningful for mental health.”

Minttu Hahtola, one of the new podcast’s hosts, echoed the sentiment. “We call it puppy therapy,” she said.

Last year, the livestream and video clips attracted more than 1 million unique viewers, more than a sixth of the Finnish population. This year, Puppy Live content has already been seen by 1.85 million unique viewers, with about six weeks to go.

In Finland, where the job market is brutal, some fans said the puppies were a balm through the slog of unemployment. Others expressed worry about neighbouring Russia. “War is a constant threat,” said Elina Peltonen, 25.

But in the puppy box, geopolitics are irrelevant. “Nothing bad happens in the puppy box,” Peltonen said.

Santeri Katainen, a self-described “dog person” with an allergic fiance, said she gets a microdose of puppy love during coffee breaks. Mikko Runolinna, who works at a hospital in the Helsinki area, said that he keeps it running on his second monitor. Jarmo Siira said he watched the puppies while giving blood.

The message is simple: Puppies are cute. Nothing here is new – except, of course, for the puppies. For them, everything is a revelation. And their fans, on a 24/7 stakeout, get to watch them grow.

“There’s no advertising,” said Kristine Visanen, 51, who watches from her New York City apartment. “There’s no algorithm. I don’t feel like there’s some kind of agenda.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

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