Media kit | Finnish Museums

Finnish Museums (Museot kartalla) is a free mobile app that gathers over 1,000 museums in Finland onto one map, from Helsinki's major art museums to the smallest local heritage museums. Find the museums near you, filter for Museum Card (Museokortti) sites and keep track of your visits.

The app is a hobby project by Juha Salo. It has no ads and collects no user data.

Facts

Name in Finnish	Museot kartalla
Name in English	Finnish Museums
Tagline	All of Finland. Every museum. A free mobile app with no ads.
Developer	Juha Salo
Price	Free, no ads
Platforms	iOS (App Store) and Android (Google Play)
Latest version	2.4.0, released 4 October 2026
Museums	1,000+ across all of Finland
Features	clustered map view, Museum Card filter, visit tracking with dates, nearest museums and directions, search, museum descriptions in Finnish and English, a fox guide that presents nearby museums with AI assistance
Use of AI	AI was used in the creation of the website, images and app.
Languages	Finnish and English
Museum data	museot.fi, paikallismuseot.fi, Wikipedia and eMuseo. Each museum in the app shows which sources its details come from. Museums, municipalities and the app's users have also sent corrections that have filled in gaps and moved map pins to the right places.
Website	juhasalo.com/finnish-museums (in English) and juhasalo.com/museot-kartalla (in Finnish)
Media contact	finnishmuseums@juhasalo.com
Hashtag	#finnishmuseums

How the app came about

The first version was born in November 2015. I was working at a company where a colleague had the idea of building an Android app that shows museums on a map. It was a good idea, so I copied it and built the same thing for the iPhone. I published it on the App Store in 2016. I also built myself a tool for fetching and editing the museum data.

The app was for my own use. It helped me visit museums and made the Museum Card easier to use. A few updates followed in 2016 and 2017, and after that the app was left alone for almost ten years. The reason it went unmaintained was that the museum data rested mainly on the museot.fi site, and at some point that site began listing Museum Card sites only.

In the summer of 2026 I decided to build a new version with the help of AI. There were two reasons: I wanted something useful to do, and it had been nagging at me that the museum data had gone unupdated for so long. The work started in early July and ran through the summer. The iOS app was rewritten from scratch, Android got an app of its own, and both were given the same look and the same features: the map, search, the Museum Card filter, visit marks, map themes, further details about each museum, summaries in Finnish and English, support for the eMuseo guides, and a fox guide that walks you through the museums nearby one at a time.

One big change is not visible in the app. Behind it is a new back end that fetches museum data from several sources, recognises the same museum across them, combines what they say and keeps track of where each detail came from. It looks up locations for museums whose coordinates are missing, and sets the unclear cases aside for a human to check. The number of museums rose from 926 to more than 1,170.

Since the summer the work has continued as corrections. Museums, municipalities and the app's users have sent in details about their own sites, and every message has been handled by hand.

On my list of things to build next: support for German and Japanese, an integration with the systems that hold events and opening hours, better support for virtual museums, and perhaps some elements of gamification.

Timeline

11/2015: The first lines of code. The idea was borrowed from a colleague, the work was my own.
2016: The app is published on the App Store, along with a first tool for maintaining the museum data.
2016 and 2017: A few updates, after which the project is left to rest.
7/2026: A fresh start. The old maintenance tool is replaced by a back end, and the iOS app is rewritten.
7/2026: The back end learns to read several sources, to look up missing locations and to spot duplicate museums.
7/2026: Version 2.0 reaches the App Store. Work on the Android app begins.
8/2026: The fox guide, map themes and settings. The website and media kit go live.
9/2026: The museum data is reviewed museum by museum. Museums and municipalities are contacted, and their answers turn into corrections.
9/2026: Version 2.3 on both platforms.
10/2026: Version 2.4.0 on both platforms: improvements to Ketku the fox, the app's own language setting, updated museum data, backgrounds that follow the season, and rebuilt filters.