Helsingin Sanomat

What is Helsingin Sanomat?

Helsingin Sanomat is a daily newspaper published by Sanoma Media Finland, which describes itself as “Suomen suurin kaupallinen mediatalo”; that is the company's own description.^[6] Sanoma's media kit for advertisers describes the paper as “laatujournalismin edelläkävijä”. It gives www.hs.fi as the website, with a mobile application and a digital facsimile edition.^[2]

The media kit states that the paper appears daily except on listed holidays. It includes New Year's Day, Easter, Midsummer and Christmas among them for 2026 and 2027.^[2] Its sport coverage sits on a path of the paper's own domain, hs.fi/urheilu.

Sanoma's own figures for the group are a weekly reach of 96 per cent in Finland, revenue of 557 million euros in 2025 and about 2,100 employees.^[6] Those are group figures, not figures for the newspaper.

The publisher's parent is Sanoma Corporation. Its group site names two businesses, Learning and Media Finland, and describes Sanoma Media Finland as “the leading Finnish cross-media media company”, which is the group's own characterisation. It gives 2025 net sales of 1,303 million euros and more than 4,600 full-time-equivalent employees across the group. It records that the group published its half-year result for 2026 on 29 July 2026, which dates the ownership described here.^[8]

What does Helsingin Sanomat cover?

Sanoma's media kit lists among the paper's sections Etusivu, Uutiset, Kaupunki, Ulkomaat, HS Visio, Urheilu, Kulttuuri, Tiede, Mielipide and Luokitellut. It adds a Koti section in the Sunday edition.^[2] Urheilu, sport, is in section A of the weekday, Saturday and Sunday editions alike.^[2]

The kit states that print readers spend about an hour a day with the paper and digital users about thirty minutes. It describes reaching over one million consumers with purchasing power a day across channels. These are the publisher's figures, and the kit gives no measuring body for them.^[2]

Helsingin Sanomat is one of the titles from which the national news agency STT draws its board. STT states that Sanoma Media Finland owns about three quarters of the agency.^[5] Sport copy from the agency's sports desk is therefore produced within a company the newspaper's publisher majority-owns.

How large is Helsingin Sanomat's audience?

Readership in Finland is measured by KMT, the national readership survey run by Media Metrics Finland. The body describes itself as the joint audience-measurement expert of the Finnish media industry.^[3] Media Metrics Finland announced KMT 2026 on 23 September 2026. It stated that the survey drew on 23,370 respondents aged over 15 in mainland Finland.^[4]

KMT's tables carry three measures. The first is weekly reach, headed “Painettu 1-7 krt/vko + digi vko”: reading the printed paper one to seven times a week, or using the title digitally in the week. The second is readers of the average printed issue, and the third adds the digital facsimile edition to the second.^[3]

KMT 2026 gives Helsingin Sanomat a weekly reach of 2,060,900, counting the printed paper read one to seven times a week together with digital use in the week. It gives 442,600 readers of the average printed issue, and 574,700 when the digital facsimile edition is included.^[3] These are KMT's figures for the whole newspaper, not for its sport section. KMT states that its digital reading figures were calibrated to FIAM weekly averages for weeks 27/2025 to 26/2026.^[3]

Sanoma's media kit, citing KMT 2025, gives a readership figure of 596,000 and a combined weekly reach of 2,076,000.^[2] Those are the previous year's KMT figures as the publisher presents them. This page gives both and uses KMT 2026 as the current figure.

Since when has Helsingin Sanomat existed?

Sanoma's own history dates the title in two steps. In 1889: “Sanoman tarina alkaa, kun Helsingin Sanomien edeltäjä Päivälehti perustetaan Helsingissä.” In 1904: “Päivälehden kustantaja Sanoma Osakeyhtiö rekisteröidään. Päivälehti lakkautetaan, Helsingin Sanomat perustetaan.”^[1]

Both dates are the publisher's account. On that account, Helsingin Sanomat as a title dates from 1904 and its predecessor from 1889. No independent source for either date was retrieved, so both are attributed to Sanoma and neither is adopted.

Why does Helsingin Sanomat matter in Finland's sport?

On KMT 2026's figures, Helsingin Sanomat reaches 2,060,900 readers a week and 442,600 read its average printed issue. The same survey gives Maaseudun Tulevaisuus 201,600 and Aamulehti 120,500 average-issue print readers.^[3] KMT prints these as rows; it does not rank them.

Its sport section is a standing part of the paper.^[2] Its publisher also owns the evening paper Ilta-Sanomat, and the majority of the national news agency.^[1][5] Reporters Without Borders describes Finnish outlets as “subject to greater media concentration, without any specific regulation”.^[7]