Things to Do in Helsinki This Summer: The Local Move Is a Ferry to Vallisaari

For two hundred years, no civilian was allowed to set foot on Vallisaari. Last summer, 107,900 people did — and the city’s own official “things to do in Helsinki” guide still hasn’t heard the news.

You can check for yourself in about thirty seconds. MyHelsinki.fi, the city’s flagship English things-to-do page, name-drops Suomenlinna over and over: top attraction, islands section, the little pre-trip list of islands worth seeing. Vallisaari? Not once.

Same archipelago. Same Market Square dock. Same twenty-minute ferry.

The city quietly reopened the island in 2016, after two centuries of keeping people off it — and apparently forgot to put it back on the list. That gap is the whole point of this article. The best thing to do in Helsinki this summer is the one thing the guides skip: a ferry to Vallisaari, and a sea-view wine tasting at IISI.

The Quick Version

If you’re just here for the logistics: the JT-Line ferry to Vallisaari leaves Market Square (Kauppatori), runs about once an hour, takes ~20 minutes, and costs €9.80 round trip — May to September only.

On the island is IISI, a wine bar out on a former military island. Its signature is a ~2-hour, sea-view Wine Tasting: about five wines with a full tapas buffet, €59 base / €69–79 themed (as of summer 2026), 62–80 seats a session, mostly Saturdays. Book at /tapahtumat. The rest of this is why it beats the fortress everyone else lists.

Why Helsinki Feels Busier Than Ever This Summer

Everyone is coming. Helsinki logged 4,924,251 overnight stays in 2025 — an all-time record, up 8.2% on the year before, with international stays alone up 17.4%. “Helsinki’s appeal as a travel destination is stronger than ever,” is how the city’s tourism director, Nina Vesterinen, framed it in the announcement. Lonely Planet backed her up, naming Finland one of 25 must-visit places in its Best in Travel 2026 list.

There’s a physics to it, too. Southern Europe keeps hitting 40°C in July, and searches for “coolcation” travel — deliberately picking somewhere cool over somewhere sweltering — grew 300% year on year. Finland is the poster child. A Helsinki summer runs on about 18 hours and 13 minutes of daylight in July — the closest thing a capital city gets to midnight sun.

Here’s the catch. All those record-breaking visitors get handed the same photocopied list — Suomenlinna, the Cathedral steps, the Design District, a sauna, a market hall, repeat. Type “things to do in Helsinki in summer” and you’ll get the same fifteen attractions, reshuffled like a losing hand of cards, on every page.

You scroll. You look at the Suomenlinna photos. And a small, tired voice asks: is that really it?

It isn’t. But you have to know where the official lists stop looking.

The Island Every Helsinki “Things to Do” List Forgets

And it isn’t just MyHelsinki. The top-ranked 2026 “25 Things to Do in Helsinki” guide on findingtheuniverse.com does the same thing: a generous standalone Suomenlinna section, and not one mention of the island next door.

The numbers explain why that omission is strange. Vallisaari’s official visitor count nearly doubled in a single year — from roughly 59,000 in 2024 to 107,900 in 2025 — which vaulted it to 14th among all of Finland’s nationally managed nature sites. That is not slow, sleepy growth. That is a place being discovered in real time.

And it’s still tiny next to its famous neighbour: Suomenlinna drew about 997,000 visitors in 2025, with a traveller experience score of 9.4 out of 10 across nearly 1,900 reviews. Do the division. Roughly nine to ten people walk Suomenlinna for every one who walks Vallisaari.

That ratio is not a warning. It’s the offer.

I won’t oversell it. Suomenlinna is genuinely great — UNESCO fortress, museums, centuries of layered history, open year-round. If that’s the trip you want, go, and enjoy it alongside twelve thousand other people that day.

Vallisaari is a different animal. Overgrown gunpowder cellars the forest is slowly eating. Trails that go silent fifty metres past the pier. A pond in the middle of the island, birdsong where the tour groups should be, the open Baltic on every side. It reads less like a monument and more like a place Helsinki forgot to develop — which, for two hundred years, is exactly what it was.

And there’s one thing on Vallisaari that no fortress has — a wine bar. Which needs explaining, because it got there entirely by accident.

How a €180 Coffee Table Became a Wine Bar on a Military Island

IISI did not start with a business plan. It started with a coffee table in a basement.

In early 2019, Oliver Laiho set up a small coffee stall in the cellar of Maria01, Helsinki’s startup campus in an old hospital. Two months of pouring coffee to people rushing between meetings earned him about 180 euros. Not a fortune. Not really a business. But someone noticed the guy who kept showing up, and one day a customer made him an offer that made no sense on paper: two empty cafés on Vallisaari — a former military island Oliver had never even seen — his to run, if he wanted them.

He said yes to a place he’d never visited.

The first wine tasting he ever hosted on that island had four guests. His dad. His dad’s wife. His brother. And his brother’s girlfriend. That was the entire audience — a family doing a favour on a rock in the sea.

Sit with that image for a second, because it’s the exact opposite of how the official Helsinki gets built — by committee, by tourism board, by consensus about what belongs on the list. IISI got built by one person handed a set of keys who decided to find out what an island could become.

The tastings now seat 62–80 people a session, mostly on summer Saturdays. He built Helsinki’s only island wine bar out of 180 euros and four relatives. That’s the human being behind the thing the listicles skip.

How to Get to Vallisaari: Ferry Times, Costs, and 18 Hours of Light

The logistics are almost annoyingly simple, which is the best kind of logistics.

You leave from Market Square (Kauppatori), the waterfront one with the orange tents and the smell of salmon over a grill, right in the centre of Helsinki. The JT-Line ferry to Vallisaari runs roughly once an hour, takes about 20 minutes each way, and costs €9.80 round trip for an adult. It operates only in season — May to September — so this is a summer move, not a year-round one.

One honest caveat, because logistics are love: check the last departure before you go. The final ferry back to the city shifts by the day and by the month — later in July and August, earlier as September winds down toward the season’s close. Look it up on jt-line.fi for your exact date and screenshot it, or read IISI’s own Vallisaari ferry guide for the fuller breakdown. Miss the last boat and you have missed your ride home; there is no bridge.

The daylight is on your side here. With 18-plus hours of light in July, a “late” ferry back still lands you at Market Square in what feels like the middle of the afternoon. You can take the 15:00 boat out and still have the island lit like noon three hours later.

Pack like a Finn, not like a tourist: a real layer, not a fashion one. It’s the open sea, the wind finds you, and the terrace is outdoors. Which brings us to the actual reason to make the crossing.

What to Do on Vallisaari: A Sea-View Wine Tasting, Not a Fortress Queue

Here is what the generic lists never surface. IISI’s Wine Tasting happens on the Café terrace, looking out over the Helsinki archipelago in the long northern light — a table of small plates, always included, never an upsell, and the open Baltic filling the horizon while you drink. Recent editions have themed the flight around Germany & Austria (Riesling and Grüner Veltliner), Piemonte, or a sparkling-and-whites lineup. The sommeliers pour in Finnish by default, but they speak English perfectly well, so don’t let that stop you.

Pick your date and book the tasting — every upcoming session is listed there with its theme and its price. Book sooner rather than later for the honest reason, not a manufactured one: the tastings run mostly on Saturdays, and the whole season is only May to September, so there are just a handful of Saturdays on the calendar before it closes on 12 September 2026. Not a wine crowd? The events page also runs daytime picnics and dinners with strangers through the same season.

The rain plan matters, because this is Finland and the terrace is open air. If it rains, the tasting moves into the Wine Barn right next to the Café — same wines, same buffet, just under a roof. A booked afternoon doesn’t get cancelled by a grey sky. That’s the quiet difference between an experience someone runs and a view that only works on a sunny postcard.

Now picture the two afternoons side by side. One is a self-guided fortress walk, shared with the ten thousand other people who got handed the same list you did, ending in a café queue. The other is five wines, a table of tapas, and the Baltic filling the horizon in front of you, poured on an island a founder built up from 180 euros and four family members. Same ferry dock. Same twenty minutes across the water. One of these is on every list in Helsinki. The other one you had to read this far to find.

Somewhere on Market Square this week, a ferry is loading for an island the official guide can’t see. Book the seat they forgot.

Frequently Asked Questions

How many days do you really need in Helsinki? Two to three days covers the core checklist — Suomenlinna, the Cathedral, the Design District, a sauna — before most visitors say they’ve run out of the obvious moves. That’s exactly the gap a Vallisaari trip fills. The ferry plus an IISI afternoon runs about four hours round trip, so it slots in as an added half-day rather than a full detour.

Is Vallisaari worth it compared to Suomenlinna? For crowds and nature, yes. Suomenlinna drew around 997,000 visitors in 2025 against Vallisaari’s 107,900 — roughly nine times busier. Suomenlinna wins on UNESCO history, museums, and year-round access. Vallisaari wins on wild trails, quiet, and having a wine bar with a sit-down sea-view tasting rather than a fortress walk.

Can I cancel or reschedule an IISI booking? Cancellation and reschedule terms are shown at checkout on the booking page, before you pay — so read them there for your exact session. Because the tasting is a dated, ferry-dependent event, it’s worth checking first. If rain is the only worry, the session still runs: it just moves indoors to the Wine Barn.

What is there to do in Helsinki if it rains? Head indoors, or book something with a rain plan. City museums like Ateneum, Amos Rex, and Kiasma are the classic wet-day move. On Vallisaari, IISI’s Wine Tasting shifts into the Wine Barn beside the Café when it rains, so a booked island afternoon survives the weather — though you should still bring a proper layer regardless.

Is Helsinki too expensive for a short trip? It doesn’t have to be, if you pick one splurge. The JT-Line ferry to Vallisaari is €9.80 round trip. IISI’s Wine Tasting runs €59–79 for a roughly two-hour flight of five wines with a full tapas buffet — priced as a single bookable experience, not a daily habit. Alko, the state alcohol store, is closed Sundays, so plan any shopping ahead.

What time does the last ferry back from Vallisaari leave? It changes by month, so check jt-line.fi for your exact date. As a rough 2026-season guide, the last boat back runs around 22:00 in July and August, closer to 20:00 in June, and as early as ~18:00 in September. Missing it means missing your ride home, so screenshot the day’s schedule before you board.