Rainy afternoon, or too cold for the playground? These are the museums worth taking kids to, from art galleries and history collections to hands-on science centers and open-air museums where they can run between old wooden buildings. A few sit a short train or bus ride outside the center. Tap any one for opening hours, prices and what a kid does there.
Seurasaari is an island museum of 89 wooden buildings moved here from across Finland, the oldest log houses dating to the late 1600s. Kids wander between farmyards, a windmill and red cottages, then step inside to see how rural families lived in the 1800s and 1900s.
The island around the museum is a free city park with a swimming beach, a public grill and picnic spots.
HAM is the city's art museum, on the second and third floors of the Tennis Palace beside the Kamppi mall. Changing exhibitions fill two levels of halls.
The Tove Jansson Gallery, named for the Moomin author, spreads across three rooms built around her two frescoes, Party in the Countryside and Party in the City. The museum also looks after the city's collection of over 10,000 artworks, including its public art.
Finland's only general museum of technology fills old city waterworks buildings on Kuninkaankartanonsaari, a river island in the Old Town. The main exhibition, TechLand, follows Finland from farm country to high tech.
Kids head for The Ghost and the Invention Device, a hands-on space where they solve mysteries and invent things to help the museum ghost switch on its machine. AI Space, on artificial intelligence, opened in 2026.
TAHTO is the sports museum of Finland, inside the Olympic Stadium. Its main exhibition has four themes: a locker room of athletes' gear, the Helsinki 1952 Olympics with a silver Olympic torch, a video wall about 12 meters wide of Finnish sports heroes, and a winter hall with a 2,500-year-old ski and Finland's first chairlift to sit on. An orienteering trail leads kids through it.
The permanent exhibition traces the Suomenlinna sea fortress from its construction in the 18th century through the Swedish, Russian and Finnish eras, using personal objects, tools and weapons found on the islands. It also shows how soldiers and other inhabitants lived and celebrated.
In the auditorium, the wide-screen film Suomenlinna Experience tells the story of the fortress and the people who built it. A temporary exhibition covers changing themes.
Merkki is a museum of news and media history, with a permanent exhibition on journalism, freedom of speech and combating disinformation. Downstairs, the Printing Cellar shows manual typesetting, typesetting machines and letterpress printing, and a small gallery is given over to memes.
Under the big yellow arch, the Joy of Reading space is made for children, with Aku Ankka (Donald Duck) comics, children's news and a cozy reading nook.
An illusion museum with more than 40 hands-on exhibits that play with perspective, gravity and mirrors. In the Zero Gravity Room the floor tilts until up and down feel swapped, the Paradox Tunnel makes walking straight feel impossible, and the Infinity Room surrounds kids with endless reflections.
Many exhibits are made for photos, so bring a phone. The Paradox Boutique sells brain teasers and small snacks.
Teatterimuseo covers theater, dance, opera, circus and puppetry inside the Cable Factory. In the Arkadia Theatre, a half-size replica of an 1820s Helsinki stage, kids can try on costumes and work the rain and wind machines.
The It's Showtime exhibition follows a show from first idea to performance and ends on an experimental stage where visitors put on their own piece. Puppets and old theater posters line the side corridor.
The museum sits inside the Erottaja fire station, built in 1891 and still in service. Kids can see horse-drawn steam and carbonic-acid pumpers, hand pumps, riveted leather hoses, helmets and uniforms, plus the colored lanterns once used to signal fires from the tower at night.
Other rooms cover ambulance history since 1905, scale models of today's rescue stations and a space for changing exhibitions.
Two hangar halls hold about 70 aircraft, from Finland's oldest surviving plane, a 1922 Hansa seaplane, to a Saab Draken jet fighter and a Douglas DC-3. Kids can sit in the vintage seats of a walk-in Convair Metropolitan cabin and try a free Draken fighter simulator sized for children.
A middle hall runs changing exhibitions and workshops. Older kids can book instructor-led flights in Boeing and Airbus simulators.
A tram depot from 1900 holds six historic tram cars, including a horse-drawn car complete with its horse. Kids can take the driver's seat in the Sisulaattori simulator, built inside a tram that ran from 1941 to 1979, and travel through wartime, Olympic and 1970s Helsinki on film and sound. A play map of the city lets them drive toy vehicles, and an old validator lets them stamp tickets.
An ethnographic museum built on the collection of Helinä Rautavaara, a Finnish journalist and explorer who traveled Africa, Asia and Latin America, mostly by hitchhiking. The permanent exhibition, Face to Face, shows art, ritual and everyday objects she gathered, in a museum holding Finland's largest collection of West African objects.
Sections were curated with people from those communities who now live around Helsinki. Kids' workshops center on handmaking.
Leikki is a museum of childhood, toys and play, in the yard of Exhibition Centre WeeGee in Tapiola. Its main exhibition, Laboratory of Play, holds a mirror up to childhood in different eras, and changing exhibitions run alongside it, such as a look at childhood and youth in the 1950s. The museum also keeps a national collection of toys.
WeeGee houses EMMA, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, and KAMU Espoo City Museum under one roof, plus the Futuro House by Matti Suuronen in summer. Kids head for the Mauri Kunnas exhibition, where they play pirates in sets from his picture books and read in a crater ringed by the planets. One ticket covers every exhibition in the building.
The Architecture & Design Museum fills its galleries with changing exhibitions on design and architecture, a short walk from the city center in the Design District. The current main show, Escape to Moominvalley, looks at how Tove Jansson's homes and her summer island shaped the Moomin stories.
Families get stroller parking, baby carriers to borrow, a changing table and potty, and a quiet basement room for snacks or nursing.
Amos Rex is a contemporary art museum built underground, beneath Lasipalatsi Square, lit by the domed skylights kids clamber over up top.
Inside, Studio Rex ties drawing, books and hands-on materials to each exhibition, and Ou, the museum's art guide for children, leaves tips beside three artworks. The shop lends skateboards, scooters and street chalk for the square outside.
The Ateneum is Finland's biggest art museum and the home of Finnish art, showing the Finnish National Gallery's classics in the permanent exhibition A Question of Time alongside changing shows.
Kids can pick up the Children's Ateneum Guide to spot, solve and color their way around, and draw, read or rest in the Studio next to the main hall. Saturdays bring hands-on art workshops and children's tours.
Kiasma is the Finnish National Gallery's contemporary art museum, in a curved building by US architect Steven Holl that opened in 1998. Its floors hold changing exhibitions of painting, installation and video.
Not every work suits young children, but there is always art that does, and staff will point families to it. A workshop space on the 5th floor runs hands-on, drop-in art sessions.
Five permanent exhibitions fill the building: Finnish Nature, World Nature, History of Life, Story of the Bones and Change in the Air, plus temporary shows. Kids can stand at the feet of a dinosaur skeleton, listen to night sounds under an African starry sky, and play museum bingo with cards in Finnish, Swedish and English. Mobile audio tours come in 60 languages.
Children's Town is the Helsinki City Museum's hands-on exhibition for young kids, set in Sederholm House, the oldest house in the city (built 1757). Kids climb into a horse-drawn carriage, take the wheel of a ship, play shop in an 18th-century store and sit in a 1930s classroom. Everything on display may be touched. Grandma's House shows 1970s everyday life, and toddlers get a marine play and reading corner.
Heureka is a hands-on science center. Kids build dams and a flood-proof city in the water exhibition, try tightrope cycling, watch Foucault's pendulum swing, and play at being archaeologists among more than 20 life-size dinosaurs. The ticket covers planetarium films and public shows, and the Play and Explore exhibition suits the youngest visitors.
Rainy afternoon, or too cold for the playground? These are the museums worth taking kids to, from art galleries and history collections to hands-on science centers and open-air museums where they can run between old wooden buildings. A few sit a short train or bus ride outside the center. Tap any one for opening hours, prices and what a kid does there.
Seurasaari is an island museum of 89 wooden buildings moved here from across Finland, the oldest log houses dating to the late 1600s. Kids wander between farmyards, a windmill and red cottages, then step inside to see how rural families lived in the 1800s and 1900s.
The island around the museum is a free city park with a swimming beach, a public grill and picnic spots.
HAM is the city's art museum, on the second and third floors of the Tennis Palace beside the Kamppi mall. Changing exhibitions fill two levels of halls.
The Tove Jansson Gallery, named for the Moomin author, spreads across three rooms built around her two frescoes, Party in the Countryside and Party in the City. The museum also looks after the city's collection of over 10,000 artworks, including its public art.
Finland's only general museum of technology fills old city waterworks buildings on Kuninkaankartanonsaari, a river island in the Old Town. The main exhibition, TechLand, follows Finland from farm country to high tech.
Kids head for The Ghost and the Invention Device, a hands-on space where they solve mysteries and invent things to help the museum ghost switch on its machine. AI Space, on artificial intelligence, opened in 2026.
TAHTO is the sports museum of Finland, inside the Olympic Stadium. Its main exhibition has four themes: a locker room of athletes' gear, the Helsinki 1952 Olympics with a silver Olympic torch, a video wall about 12 meters wide of Finnish sports heroes, and a winter hall with a 2,500-year-old ski and Finland's first chairlift to sit on. An orienteering trail leads kids through it.
The permanent exhibition traces the Suomenlinna sea fortress from its construction in the 18th century through the Swedish, Russian and Finnish eras, using personal objects, tools and weapons found on the islands. It also shows how soldiers and other inhabitants lived and celebrated.
In the auditorium, the wide-screen film Suomenlinna Experience tells the story of the fortress and the people who built it. A temporary exhibition covers changing themes.
Merkki is a museum of news and media history, with a permanent exhibition on journalism, freedom of speech and combating disinformation. Downstairs, the Printing Cellar shows manual typesetting, typesetting machines and letterpress printing, and a small gallery is given over to memes.
Under the big yellow arch, the Joy of Reading space is made for children, with Aku Ankka (Donald Duck) comics, children's news and a cozy reading nook.
An illusion museum with more than 40 hands-on exhibits that play with perspective, gravity and mirrors. In the Zero Gravity Room the floor tilts until up and down feel swapped, the Paradox Tunnel makes walking straight feel impossible, and the Infinity Room surrounds kids with endless reflections.
Many exhibits are made for photos, so bring a phone. The Paradox Boutique sells brain teasers and small snacks.
Teatterimuseo covers theater, dance, opera, circus and puppetry inside the Cable Factory. In the Arkadia Theatre, a half-size replica of an 1820s Helsinki stage, kids can try on costumes and work the rain and wind machines.
The It's Showtime exhibition follows a show from first idea to performance and ends on an experimental stage where visitors put on their own piece. Puppets and old theater posters line the side corridor.
The museum sits inside the Erottaja fire station, built in 1891 and still in service. Kids can see horse-drawn steam and carbonic-acid pumpers, hand pumps, riveted leather hoses, helmets and uniforms, plus the colored lanterns once used to signal fires from the tower at night.
Other rooms cover ambulance history since 1905, scale models of today's rescue stations and a space for changing exhibitions.
Two hangar halls hold about 70 aircraft, from Finland's oldest surviving plane, a 1922 Hansa seaplane, to a Saab Draken jet fighter and a Douglas DC-3. Kids can sit in the vintage seats of a walk-in Convair Metropolitan cabin and try a free Draken fighter simulator sized for children.
A middle hall runs changing exhibitions and workshops. Older kids can book instructor-led flights in Boeing and Airbus simulators.
A tram depot from 1900 holds six historic tram cars, including a horse-drawn car complete with its horse. Kids can take the driver's seat in the Sisulaattori simulator, built inside a tram that ran from 1941 to 1979, and travel through wartime, Olympic and 1970s Helsinki on film and sound. A play map of the city lets them drive toy vehicles, and an old validator lets them stamp tickets.
An ethnographic museum built on the collection of Helinä Rautavaara, a Finnish journalist and explorer who traveled Africa, Asia and Latin America, mostly by hitchhiking. The permanent exhibition, Face to Face, shows art, ritual and everyday objects she gathered, in a museum holding Finland's largest collection of West African objects.
Sections were curated with people from those communities who now live around Helsinki. Kids' workshops center on handmaking.
Leikki is a museum of childhood, toys and play, in the yard of Exhibition Centre WeeGee in Tapiola. Its main exhibition, Laboratory of Play, holds a mirror up to childhood in different eras, and changing exhibitions run alongside it, such as a look at childhood and youth in the 1950s. The museum also keeps a national collection of toys.
WeeGee houses EMMA, the Espoo Museum of Modern Art, and KAMU Espoo City Museum under one roof, plus the Futuro House by Matti Suuronen in summer. Kids head for the Mauri Kunnas exhibition, where they play pirates in sets from his picture books and read in a crater ringed by the planets. One ticket covers every exhibition in the building.
The Architecture & Design Museum fills its galleries with changing exhibitions on design and architecture, a short walk from the city center in the Design District. The current main show, Escape to Moominvalley, looks at how Tove Jansson's homes and her summer island shaped the Moomin stories.
Families get stroller parking, baby carriers to borrow, a changing table and potty, and a quiet basement room for snacks or nursing.
Amos Rex is a contemporary art museum built underground, beneath Lasipalatsi Square, lit by the domed skylights kids clamber over up top.
Inside, Studio Rex ties drawing, books and hands-on materials to each exhibition, and Ou, the museum's art guide for children, leaves tips beside three artworks. The shop lends skateboards, scooters and street chalk for the square outside.
The Ateneum is Finland's biggest art museum and the home of Finnish art, showing the Finnish National Gallery's classics in the permanent exhibition A Question of Time alongside changing shows.
Kids can pick up the Children's Ateneum Guide to spot, solve and color their way around, and draw, read or rest in the Studio next to the main hall. Saturdays bring hands-on art workshops and children's tours.
Kiasma is the Finnish National Gallery's contemporary art museum, in a curved building by US architect Steven Holl that opened in 1998. Its floors hold changing exhibitions of painting, installation and video.
Not every work suits young children, but there is always art that does, and staff will point families to it. A workshop space on the 5th floor runs hands-on, drop-in art sessions.
Five permanent exhibitions fill the building: Finnish Nature, World Nature, History of Life, Story of the Bones and Change in the Air, plus temporary shows. Kids can stand at the feet of a dinosaur skeleton, listen to night sounds under an African starry sky, and play museum bingo with cards in Finnish, Swedish and English. Mobile audio tours come in 60 languages.
Children's Town is the Helsinki City Museum's hands-on exhibition for young kids, set in Sederholm House, the oldest house in the city (built 1757). Kids climb into a horse-drawn carriage, take the wheel of a ship, play shop in an 18th-century store and sit in a 1930s classroom. Everything on display may be touched. Grandma's House shows 1970s everyday life, and toddlers get a marine play and reading corner.
Heureka is a hands-on science center. Kids build dams and a flood-proof city in the water exhibition, try tightrope cycling, watch Foucault's pendulum swing, and play at being archaeologists among more than 20 life-size dinosaurs. The ticket covers planetarium films and public shows, and the Play and Explore exhibition suits the youngest visitors.
