Panopticon

First larp out in October is Panopticon by Nor Hernø

 

In the Panopticon prison, you live under constant surveillance until a glitch disrupts the system, offering brief moments of freedom. Seizing these outages, you can navigate between cells to reconnect with people from your past but must return before power is restored. In the end you will make one final decision that will determine your fate and potentially the fate of those around you.

NB.: Participation requires a level of physical mobility, as fast-paced movement is necessary during the larp, as well as being comfortable with heavy use of sound and light.

ESTRANGED

We hare pleased to give you our next programme update: ESTRANGED by Maya Hindsberg

"Mom, now you're being unreasonable, you're making me sad."
This is a story about how you get to the point where you have to make the choice about whether you want to cut ties with a parent or stay. Join us on the journey and experience the picture perfect moments, the nightmares, the good and bad days, when relationships are cut, when they aren't, and hear the words of the outside world when you make a decision that will have consequences. 

This is a scenario about love and grief, and the ambivalence and relief that comes with breaking of a relationship with your parent that is not healthy for you. You will play either parent or child in a pair, and find out which way your relationship will go. 

Created through Love

We are happy to present Created through Love by Nina Runa Essendrop

Children must learn how to navigate life. They dream about the future they want, they learn how to guard themselves from harm and they adapt to the norms of the people around them. These are precious things needed to safely grow, but at some point they might no longer serve us.

In ‘Created through Love’ the players are guided to physically explore how childhood dreams, defense mechanisms and group norms can become obstacles later in life and how to possibly find the courage to let go. The dreams, defense mechanisms and norms are represented by physical objects and each player creates their characters’ story through abstract interactions with the objects, the space and each other.

Where Love Happens

We are happy to announce the first larp from the programme for Grenselandet 2026; Where Love Happens by Kaisa Kangas, Essi Santala, Tonja Goldblatt, Helena Markku, Elena Rekola, Riina Tikkanen

“Do You believe epic love stories only happen on the silver screen? Think again! At Where Love Happens, we specialize in making Your romantic dreams come true. Powered by our advanced AI Aphrodite, our matchmaking process delivers a 99% success rate in finding Your One True Love.”
Where Love Happens is a comedy about romantic comedies and their clichés – you might call it a deconstruction of a romantic comedy. It studies the relationship between humans and objects by combining larp with puppetry. Participants will get to play together with human-sized Cupid puppets that are manipulated by professional puppeteers.  Participants will also use hand puppets to represent their characters in some scenes.

Participants play customers at the romantic consultation agency Where Love Happens that is run by two Cupids – magical creatures with special powers.

The characters are ordinary people who long for Hollywood-style romance. Humour is born out of the clash between reality and Hollywood-shaped dreams, expectations, and norms. The larp has a narrative arc where the characters move towards liberation from the romantic conventions Hollywood has fed them.

Since the larp deals with Hollywood tropes, it involves heteronormativity and LGBT tokenism. There is also soft mind control. You might not get to play a character that has the same gender or sexual orientation as yourself. There is potentially awkward content such as dating and relationship crises. Participants are expected to be comfortable with hugging and with touching each other’s hands and arms. Sex can be a topic in the larp, but players are not expected to play erotic scenes. Some scenes are played using puppets but the larp does not require any previous experience on puppetry.

Where Love Happens has been financially supported by the Finnish Cultural Foundation and the Finnish Arts and Culture Agency.

Photo by Tuomas Puikkonen

Call for larps 2026

Want to run a larp at Grenselandet 2026?

We are pleased to open our call for larps for the festival on December 4th and 5th. Whether you have a ready-to-play and well tested larp, or just an idea in the making, we would love to hear from new and old larpmakers. Send us your pitch today, and hopefully you will run it at the festival in the Winter!

Grenselandet offer high quality venues, including professional black boxes, depending on the format and requirements of the larp. We also have some budget for props and a small fund for travel (reserved for larpmakers who would otherwise not be able to travel). All larpmakers with a larp on the programme may attend the festival free of charge.

The 1st call for larps closes on July 1st.

Submit your larp idea here!

Bonus larp: Root and Branch

We unfortunately have to cancel Panopticon due to the larpmaker being ill. The good news is that we have a bonus larp for you to replace it with - Root and Branch by Alex Brown.

This is the story of humanoid creatures from a distant future time and space who evolved in symbiosis with the forest. In this world, a dream is the root of one’s identity, and has the same importance as waking reality. 

Guided by collective dreams, stories will branch in non-linear directions, affecting past, present and future. Under threat from an aggressive rival, the forest is slowly taken away, and our protagonists struggle to hold on to their power.

Final larp: House Party

Today we relaese our final addition the programme - House Party by Laurie Penny. 

It’s 2084 in an alternate-Future Britain. Airstrip One
is a totalitarian nightmare, and you are a contestant on a long- running reality tv show called House Party. Think Big Brother, but literally. Taskmaster,  with a lot more mortal peril.

Contestants play silly games for points, and if you manage to win enough, you can go home with a huge prize. But every month, one contestant must be chosen by the others to die.

Meanwhile, the producers are keeping an eye on the audience ratings- and if the drama drops off and ratings drop too low, they might decide to ‘make things more interesting.’

In this game, you can play one of the twelve contestants OR you can choose your level of interaction, and direct play, by playing a drone camera operator.

A character-driven game about performance, social capital and collective bullying. We will workshop, build characters and relationships for just under 1.5h,  and then we’ll play for just under 2.5h, with a break in between. 

Have fun! Make friends! Win prizes! Try not to die!

Content warning: state oppression, character death, terminal illness.