Almedalen 2024

Almedalen Week is the single largest political event held in Sweden. It takes place every year during the last week of June in the medieval town of Visby on the island of Gotland, which is situated in the middle of the Baltic Sea. The event was cancelled for two years during the Corona pandemic, which led to speculation as to its future and, in particular, whether it would be able to retain the status it had developed over the 50 years since it started as the preeminent event of its kind in Sweden. However, as was clear from this year's Almedalen, the event continues to play an undeniably vital role in bringing together key decision-makers from the worlds of politics, business, and other leading organisations. Over four days, more than 2,100 events were held by 1,3000 organisers with just over 30,000 people attending.

The event is, likewise, highly important for Rud Pedersen Public Affairs Stockholm. This year, we supported 30 clients during the week with everything from arranging large seminars, roundtable discussions, and stakeholder meetings to moderator engagements and monitoring developments across a range of sectors and areas. The key areas for Rud Pedersen’s engagement this year were healthcare, tech and AI, energy, infrastructure, and security and defence. This corresponds with the breadth of issues represented in the various events held during the week. A key feature of Almedalen is the value gained from simply being present and taking the opportunity to meet and network with potential clients, decision-makers, industry voices et al. This year, we organised the largest mingle at Almedalen, with over 900 people attending.

As an event, Almedalen has been fine-tuned somewhat since the pandemic, notably by compressing the week to 4 days. Previously, each party had their own day and party leader speech, however, all 8 parliamentary parties having their own day had been deemed too long. This year, two political parties held their party leader speeches on the same day, at 11 am and 7 pm respectively. This appears to have been generally well received, however, the new format does risk lessening the focus on the political parties themselves. This might potentially result in the parties’ interest in participating in Almedalen fading somewhat, which could jeopardise the event in the long term. It is precisely the parties’ presence and engagement, especially from the party leaders, that creates Almedalen’s perceived value as highly relevant to a broad range of actors.

Despite the number of events and participants decreasing slightly since pre-pandemic levels, in our experience and view from this year's Almedalen, this was beneficial. This year, in particular, we witnessed evermore the right people being in the right place at the right time, which provided an unsurpassed setting for democratic dialogue and sharing knowledge. The fact that the weather was fantastic only helped!