Walpurgis Eve in Uppsala

Come and enjoy the celebration in Uppsala’s streets and square. Watch while 350 white-water racers, from all over Sweden, try to make their way down the Fyris River with the help of home-built, fragile rafts. Listen to beautiful songs and music and enjoy good food. This is one public celebration the whole City embraces, and which will be a lifetime experience.

Close to 30 000 people come here to enjoy the atmosphere and take part in the festivities. Throughout the last week of April, students arrange concerts, parties and other activities in the student areas.

Here is the traditional programme for Walpurgis Eve:

7.00–09.30 Champagne breakfast
On Slottsbacken (the Castle hillside) or on the grass of one of the City’s many parks.

10.00–12.00 White-water rafting
The students’ imaginative floats try, with a bit of luck, to make it down the Fyris River from Edda Footbridge to the Island Waterfall. Judge their performance at the Mill Waterfall.

12.00–14.30 Sill lunch
Lunch is arranged privately in the student nations or in one of the many parks. Ekonomikum Park is especially popular, as the student radio programme 98.9 usually sends live music directly from the stage.

13.30 Male voices of Uppsala Cathedral’s Boys’ Choir
Walpurgis songs in the English Park.

15.00 (Precisely) The Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala University welcomes in the spring from the balcony of Carolina Rediviva.
The Vice-Chancellor raises his white cap which is the signal for all students to put on their white caps too, followed by mass cheering and running down Carolina Hill to end with a “champagne gallop” in the student nations.

15.15 Orphei Drängar choir
Concert in the University Hall and in the University Park.

17.30 Seated Dining at the student nations.
Dinner, dance, and general fesivities – with a short pause at 21.00.

21.00 The student nation president, Curator Curatorum, gives the spring speech at Gunilla Bell.
Followed by singing led by the choir Allmänna Sången.

22.00 Back to respective student nations for evening dining and continued partying.