At 12:00 Finnish time on Tuesday 24 November, phones in Finland may sound a loud alarm, foreign phones included. The text is in Finnish and Swedish.
Finland will test FI-Alert, its new emergency warning system, across the whole country for the first time on Tuesday 24 November 2026 at 12:00 Finnish time. That is 11:00 in Central Europe and 10:00 UTC. Phones in Finland may then sound an alarm tone and show a warning on the screen. Pauliina Eskola of the Ministry of the Interior announced the date when the system was unveiled on 28 October.
FI-Alert reaches 4G and 5G phones connected to a mobile network in Finland, whatever the operator. Visitors using a foreign SIM card or roaming receive the alerts too, and the system also works without a SIM card.
The alert appears on the screen as a separate warning, not as an ordinary text message. No app or registration is needed.
The tone and vibration may come through even when the phone is set to silent.
The phone’s operating system needs to have been updated after October 2026.
Why most visitors will not understand the message
By law, emergency warnings in Finland are always issued in Finnish and Swedish, and in the Sámi languages when needed. Other languages are still being considered. A visitor who reads neither language will hear the alarm and see a text they cannot read. Two words help: an emergency warning is vaaratiedote in Finnish and varningsmeddelande in Swedish. The idea is the same as the Emergency Alerts system in the UK.
If phones start ringing in a group or on a safari
At noon on 24 November the alarm is a test, and nobody needs to do anything. If you guide a group or run husky , reindeer or snowmobile trips, tell your guests before noon that a test alarm is coming and that its text will be in Finnish and Swedish. An alarm going off on every phone in a group at once is easy to mistake for a real emergency.
According to the authorities, the test message may not reach every phone. If yours stays silent, update the phone’s software and restart it.
A real alert tells you what to do first and names the authority that sent it. Stay calm and follow the instructions. If you cannot read the text, take a screenshot and open it in a translation app. In an emergency, call 112.