The Nobel Week is for the sixth year in a row celebrated with the light art festival Nobel Week Lights, where light art inspired by the Nobel Prize lights up a dark Stockholm in the middle of winter. The festival area has this year been expanded with light installations in both Tensta and the city centre. The festival runs during the period 6–14 December.
Exoplanets taking over Sergels torg, strong messages of peace displayed on the City Hall and the Royal Palace, an illuminated door serving as a link between Tensta and Parliament House – these are some of the artworks in this year’s edition of Nobel Week Lights. The light art festival has for five years illuminated Stockholm’s city centre with light artworks. The festival area is now growing, and the art will in 2025 be found in both Tensta and the city centre.
“What we celebrate during Nobel Week is humanity’s ability to address the great questions of each era. There is something hopeful in that, which Nobel Week Lights also captures. The light art festival gives us an opportunity to meet and see the city in a new way, while experiencing the power found in the stories of the Nobel Prize laureates. With 1.7 million visits last year, Nobel Week Lights has become a cherished tradition. This year the festival is expanding with an additional zone, and we are exploring the possibility of rotating it between different locations in the future,” says Hanna Stjärne, Executive Director of the Nobel Foundation.
Nobel Week Lights invites both international and local artists, designers, and students to create large-scale public light artworks in Stockholm. The light installations are all inspired by the scientific discoveries, literature and peace work made by Nobel Prize laureates.
The festival is largely based on collaborations with local actors, and many of the artworks on display are strongly characterised by a co-creation process with the audience.
One example is the artwork Alma de Artista by artist and poet Nachla Libre, which can be seen in the centre of Tensta during the festival. This artwork pays tribute to poet and human rights advocate Gabriela Mistral, Nobel Prize laureate in literature in 1945, and is developed during the autumn together with youths from the Tensta Tech community youth centre in Blå huset, participants in the poet Nawroz Zakholy’s writing course at Tensta konsthall and the association Låt konsten tala from Framtidens Hus in Rinkeby. Here, poetry is interwoven with the artist’s words and graphical idiom.
”Before this year’s festival, we were invited to imagine how the festival could evolve in Järva, and Tensta offered a unique and important context,” says Lara Szabo Greisman, Festival Director and co-founder of the festival. ”Light art has the magical ability to be both high quality and accessible, inspiring awe while enabling a sense of local pride, inclusion and collective ownership of the city.”
A stone’s throw away from Nachla Libre’s installation is the artwork The Door – a door painted red that ties in with Tomas Tranströmer’s poem The Half-Finished Heaven. On the Norrbro bridge, in front of Parliament House, there is another door in the same shade of red. When the doors open, visitors see each other and become part of the same artwork.
Just as in previous years, there is a large-scale light installation illuminating the City Hall facade in the city centre. This year, French artist Yann Nguema, one of the most prominent individuals in video mapping globally, uses his work Pro Pace to tell the viewers about peace prize laureates whose struggle is still relevant today, while also reminding us of the precious and fragile nature of peace. The theme of peace is also in focus in the immersive light artwork 21.9 by Les Ateliers BK displayed in Södra valvet at the Royal Palace.
Many different kinds of activities are organised in both the city centre and Tensta during the festival. 63 guided tours are offered in 10 languages, where Northern Sami, Somali and Tigrinya are new additions this year. The festival is free to visit.
The programme with all 19 light installations will be published on 3 November at www.nobelweeklights.se
The artworks can be viewed 16:00–22:00 every day during the period 6–14 December 2025.
About Nobel Week Lights
Nobel Week Lights is initiated, curated and produced by Annika Levin, Alexandra Manson, Lara Szabo Greisman and Troika AB. The event is part of the official Nobel Week programme and is presented by the Nobel Prize Museum with support from the City of Stockholm, the Stockholm Chamber of Commerce, the Swedish National Space Agency, Fagerhult, FAM, Grand Hôtel Stockholm, Einar Mattsson AB, the Erling-Persson Foundation and Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, as well as a number of additional partners. By means of light art, Nobel Week Lights serves as a tribute to the Nobel Prize laureates and their efforts to bring the greatest benefit to humankind.