Slush 2025 recap: what happened, the figures and a founder's account

This is a recap of Slush 2025, the startup and investor event held in Helsinki on 19–20 November 2025. It covers the speakers, exhibition floor, meeting area, volunteers, afterparty and the Slush 100 final. It uses Slush's own pages and the organisers' pages, and says plainly where they stop. For practical 2026 information, read our Slush Helsinki guide. For the rules and prize of the competition, see Slush 100 explained.

Slush's media page says Slush 2025 would gather 13,000 founders, investors and media on 19–20 November in Helsinki. It lists 5,500 startup operators and founders, 3,000 investors, 250 media representatives and 1,700 partners and ecosystem builders.1

These are forward-looking numbers ("will gather"). We found no official count of who actually came. A pre-event Slush article for startups gives a different investor figure, "3,500+ actively scouting investors".3 We show both and do not choose between them. In the closing words of the 2025 programme, the host spoke of 13,000 people in front of the founder stage. That is a spoken figure, not a published count.9

Slush's speaker announcement said the Startup Stage would showcase 60 early-stage founders, from pre-seed to Series A, from Europe and beyond. It also published its first 100 speakers, including Anton Osika of Lovable and Alexandre Prot of Qonto.2

How meetings and the days before the main event work is explained on our pages about the Slush meeting tool and Day 0. We do not repeat them here.

Slush's own video of Day 0, the day before the main days, shows three places in central Helsinki. At the Allas Sea Pool, founders and investors met for cold dips and sauna. At Finlandia Hall, about 2,000 investors met before the main event, according to the video's narrator. At the Helsinki SkyWheel, climate founders met leading climate backers, and the wheel had a sauna cabin.

Research teams also used the week. In a news item of 12 November 2025, the University of Helsinki said it was taking part in Slush for the 11th time. It pointed to side events including Y Science on 19 November, and said it would present research-based projects such as an epilepsy drug and a rapid test to tell a stroke from a brain haemorrhage. These are pre-event statements.10

Journalists had their own Day 0 programme, the Helsinki Startup Crawl for Media, organised with Helsinki Partners, IQM and Maki.vc. It included visits to IQM's office and to Maki.vc's office at Maria 01, where three startups presented: Onego Bio, IXI Eyewear and Riff. SiltaNova's editor took part as a journalist.

We found no 2025 speaker page on Slush's site. The page at slush.org/audience/speakers is the 2026 lineup, and the 2025 programme app did not load. This section therefore rests on Slush's own photo gallery, which names and dates each session, and on Slush's past-speakers page, which gives no years. It is not a full list.16

Two speakers lead this section. Slush's gallery tags Ilkka Paananen of Supercell on a Founder Stage session on 19 Nov 2025, “Building European Champions”, alongside Aino Bergius and Neil Rimer.13 Miki Kuusi, co-founder and former CEO of Wolt, is tagged on a Founder Stage session on 20 Nov, “License to Scale: Competing for Europe's Future”.14,15 Paananen's title, co-founder and CEO of Supercell, comes from Slush's undated past-speakers page, not from a 2025 page.12

Slush says the Founder Stage was the only stage livestreamed, and that all stage talks were recorded for its YouTube channel.17

We did not find Slush's own 2025 exhibitor pages online, so this section uses the organisers' pages. Seven countries or regions appear. Four of their pages speak of a pavilion. Three speak only of a delegation, so we use that word for them. Most pages are pre-event announcements, so the startup numbers are the organisers' own figures.

Among company booths, the University of Helsinki said before the event that it would have a section at Slush showing research projects.10 Nordea said before the event that its booth would be close to the Founders stage.26 Stripe and Google appear in Slush's own gallery photos of their booths from 19 Nov 2025. The Stripe photo sits in an album called “Stripe Booth”; the Google booth is identified only by the sign visible in the photo. We found no 2025 text page from Slush for either.27,28

Slush said its expanded Meeting Area had more than 400 tables and expected more than 10,000 startup–VC meetings a day.3 A Slush how-to article, which is undated, says a table is reserved for each meeting for 25 minutes and only people with a meeting can enter the area.29 Investors could also host Investor Office Hours for up to 70 founders.30 These are Slush's pre-event statements, and we found no post-event count of meetings held. How to book is set out in our guide to the Slush meeting tool.

Slush's photo gallery has a picture titled "Slush 100 Winner Announcement", posted on 20 November 2025 and filed under Slush 2025 Day 2.6 Slush's own LinkedIn post names Diffraqtion, which builds visual AI hardware and software for satellites and machines, as the winner of the competition.8 Diffraqtion's website also refers to "winning SLUSH 2025".5

Slush describes the prize for 2022 to 2025 as a €1M investment from top VCs, replaced in 2026 by €500,000 equity-free.4 For 2025, Slush's own post names the investors as Cherry Ventures and General Catalyst and calls it a €1M equity funding prize.8

The final had three finalists: Diffraqtion, Kinetic and Parsewise. Each had five minutes to pitch and five minutes of questions from a jury of partners from Cherry Ventures and General Catalyst.11 The three companies, the jury's questions and the full list of the 100 startups selected for 2026 are in Slush 100 explained.

While the jury was out, a partner from Cherry Ventures and a partner from General Catalyst sat down with Slush's president for what the host called the last stage talk of the year. Their advice was aimed at the founders and the volunteers in the hall.11

Both put passion first and said they want to know why a founder is building the company and what gives them a head start. For a first round, they advised researching the investor before reaching out, knowing your numbers, and asking customers and other builders, not investors, what to build.11

On choosing an investor, the General Catalyst partner said the commitment can last ten or twenty years, so personal fit matters. The Cherry partner suggested asking a fund that passes for feedback and for names of other investors. Both told would-be founders to go for it, and the General Catalyst partner added that Europe is a good place to build, because its universities supply AI-native talent with less competition than in the US.11

Slush's Startup Struggle Survey 2025 is based on 607 responses from early-stage European founders collected in Q1 2025. Fundraising was the top concern for 58.1% of founders, down from 63% the year before. Customer acquisition held steady at just over 50%.7 This is a survey of European founders, not only of Slush attendees.

Slush says it is organised by students and recent graduates. It is a not-for-profit organisation owned by the Startup Foundation, a Finnish not-for-profit.31 Its About page gives the number of volunteers as 1,600, the figure we use for Slush 2025.31 Other Slush pages give 1,700, 1,800 (the 2026 page) or 2,000, as the table shows.

The 2026 volunteer page lists ten teams, among them Production, Startup and Partnership, and says half of the volunteers work in production.34 The About page mentions 15 teams, so we give no team count for 2025.31 Slush's Volunteer Founder Report, published in August 2026, looks at what former volunteers went on to do. Its newsroom and impact-site versions disagree on the total since the start (more than 10,000 against 17,000), so we quote neither.35

Slush's photo gallery has an Afterparty album filed under Day 2 of Slush 2025. It is our only official source for the acts, because slush.org/afterparty now shows the 2026 line-up.36 Slush's winner-announcement video for Slush 100 says the afterparty had three stages, with artists, DJs and karaoke.9 Kaj and Madcon are tagged Founder Stage.37,38

INNA also played: the editor was there and saw the performance. Slush's gallery has photos tagged INNA in the afterparty album, but with no stage tag, and no official page we found lists the performance.39

TO ADD (editor): your own account of Slush 2025 (what you did, who you met, what stood out), your photos, your video and your report from the floor.

Slush 2026 is on 18–19 November 2026. Dates, passes and deadlines are in the Slush Helsinki guide, the events around the main days are in the side events list, and the competition's rules are in Slush 100 explained. The official Slush 100 page is on slush.org.