Helsinki is a bilingual municipality with Finnish and Swedish as its official languages. The population consists of 75% Finnish speakers, 5% Swedish speakers, and 20% speakers of other languages (which is well above the national average).

Helsinki hosted the 1952 Summer Olympics, the first CSCE/OSCE Summit in 1975, the first World Athletics Championships in 1983, the 52nd Eurovision Song Contest in 2007 and it was the 2012 World Design Capital