“Puppy Live” is exactly what it sounds like. It’s a 24/7 livestream of newborn puppies.
And everyone in Finland, it sometimes seems, is invested.
“It’s a form of stress relief,” said Kalle Kurittu, 32, who lives in Helsinki and has watched for years.
“I love all the puppies equally,” said Mandi Salo, 9, also of Helsinki, who said she was excited when one pup opened its eyes.
“Puppy Live” — “Pentulive” in Finnish — is something like “The Truman Show” for a litter, raised from birth to adoption in front of an adoring public.
Broadcast by Yle, Finland’s public broadcaster, the stream is a phenomenon, with well over 1 million viewers. Now, in its sixth year, the show is going international.
Sweden’s public broadcaster, SVT, has started airing the livestream. A Dutch broadcaster has bought the rights for a spinoff (with Dutch puppies).
Yle (pronounced OO-lay) has even started a “Puppy Live” podcast and, in a very 2026 move, released a prediction market game to run for the eight weeks of the season. Even though the babies sleep some 20 hours a day, there’s plenty to bet on: How much do they weigh? How long are their tails? Which will grow fastest? Players earn points, and weekly winners get a mug.
At any given minute, the puppies, currently 2 weeks old, are probably sleeping. They twitch on a purple blanket like furry potatoes. Mostly, nothing much happens.
And that’s the point. “I think anyone who is interested in the livestream expects to see sleeping puppies a lot of the time,” said Pietu Ruuttunen, 28, a viewer in the city of Jyvaskyla.
The broadcast is a particularly cute example of “slow” television, a distinctly Nordic genre of easy, idyllic viewing. The Norwegians were pioneers of the form, broadcasting hours at a time of burning firewood or the view from a moving train. Each year, Swedes flock to a livestream of a moose migration.
And the Finns? They’ve got a lot of options.
There was a livestream of groceries along a checkout conveyor belt. Freshwater seals play in a lake. Ospreys nest in their aerie.
The feeds could look like a screen saver at first glance. The genre is rooted in service television, said Annette Hill, a professor of media and communication studies at Jonkoping University in Sweden.
Because public broadcasters do not need to advertise or sell products, they can invest in programs free from commercial demands. Viewers find it soothing — almost therapeutic.
“That’s what this slow TV does,” Hill said. “It makes you be in the present, and it makes you slow down and stop this frenzy and stop scrolling and stop panicking about what’s going to happen tomorrow.”
This year on “Puppy Live,” there are six puppies, four male and two female. The mother, Hilkka, is calm even as her progeny kick and thrash and scramble over one another to nurse. (The mothers are carefully selected and supported by veterinarians, and all of the puppies on the show have been born healthy, according to Yle’s website.)
“Puppy Live” started during the coronavirus pandemic. Finns, like everyone else, needed comfort. (Kurittu said he had “fond memories of coming home drunk just in time to happen upon the mother halfway to a litter.”)
But a lot of them also needed a crash course in dogs. Many, stuck at home, were suddenly spending more time with their own. Others decided to adopt.
Pirjo Koskinen, the show’s founder, said that she had wanted to create something educational. She was surprised by the response, she said. “I really didn’t know that this would be so meaningful for mental health.”
Minttu Hahtola, one of the new podcast’s hosts, echoed the sentiment. “We call it puppy therapy,” she said.
Last year, the livestream and video clips attracted more than 1 million unique viewers, which would be more than a sixth of the Finnish population. This year, “Puppy Live” content has already been seen by 1.85 million unique viewers, with about six weeks to go.
In Finland, which is caught in a brutal job market, some fans said the puppies were a balm through the slog of unemployment. Others expressed worry about neighboring Russia. “War is a constant threat,” said Elina Peltonen, 25.
But in the puppy box, geopolitics are irrelevant. “Nothing bad happens in the puppy box,” Peltonen said.
Santeri Katainen, a self-described “dog person” with an allergic fiance, said she gets a microdose of puppy love during coffee breaks. Mikko Runolinna, who works at a hospital in the Helsinki area, said that he keeps it running on his second monitor. Jarmo Siira said he watched the puppies while giving blood.
The message is simple: Puppies are cute. Nothing here is new — except, of course, for the puppies. For them, everything is a revelation. And their fans, on a 24/7 stakeout, get to watch them grow.
“There’s no advertising,” said Kristine Visanen, 51, who watches from her New York City apartment. “There’s no algorithm. I don’t feel like there’s some kind of agenda.
“This is somehow perfect,” she added. “Just how it is.”
Source: San Francisco Examiner (original article from The New York Times); video courtesy of CNN via YouTube
