Up Helly Aa (Lerwick Squads)
~50 'squads' of about 20 guizers each. Organized largely along neighborhood, workplace, and friend-group lines. Create their own themed costumes, perform satirical acts at 11 host venues across town through the night, and torch a Viking longship together. The Jarl's Squad leads; other squads pick historical, satirical, or topical themes (recent ones: Star Wars, Vikings, politics).
Squads visit and perform at 11 host halls in sequence and are informally judged by audiences and press. No formal trophy but reputation, costume novelty, and act quality drive competitive bragging rights.
Each squad spends ~9 months together building costumes, props, choreographing the 'turn' (act), and rehearsing. Squads commission their own bar, food, and hall logistics, sustained year-round by tight friend-group cohesion.
A small-island variant where squads are emergent (not strictly geographic). Useful BelongHub variant where users self-form 'crews' rather than being assigned by postcode. The host-hall rotation is also an interesting itinerant-judging format.
Others in the same family
Ciudad Saludable / Healthy Cities (Bupa)
Free 'Healthy Cities' app: register 6,000 daily steps, choose a city/commune to support. Bupa Foundation channels funds into local nature-restoration projects in each participating district. Chile 2025 funded 7 commune legacies: San Bernardo, La Florida, Coquimbo, Maipú, Renca, Viña del Mar, Huechuraba.
Splat Town (KYKUYO, Niantic Lightship ARDK Challenge)
Built on Niantic's Lightship ARDK, Splat Town lets two-player teams spray Splatoon-style goo onto real-world surfaces at VPS-mapped landmarks. Goo persists across sessions in a server-side database so every player sees the same coverage.
STADTRADELN (City Cycling)
21-day national bicycle-kilometer competition organized by Klima-Bündnis (Climate Alliance). Over 1.2 million participants in 2024-2025. Citizens log kilometers via app or website; municipalities and councils form teams.
2zero Klimathon (Mannheim, Glienicke, Hufeisen-Region, Schleswig-Holstein)
6-week 'Klimathon' run by Berlin-based 2zero (formerly Klimakompass). Each week features 4-6 challenges across themes (mobility, food, energy, consumption, digital, leisure). Mannheim ran as a CoLAB pilot under the EU '100 climate-neutral cities by 2030' Mission starting Jan 2025.
Klima-Taler
App by Berlin greentech Blacksquared. Every 5 kg of CO2 saved (via cycling, transit, energy-saving) earns one digital Klima-Taler redeemable at participating local retailers. In 2024 the city of Leer in East Frisia saved 291.3 tons of CO2 and topped the national ranking, with 54 partner shops and 10,000+ redeemed Talers.
Climathon (EIT Climate-KIC)
24-48 hour citizen hackathon run by EIT Climate-KIC. Each participating city sets its own local climate challenge; teams of citizens, students, and entrepreneurs develop solutions. Best team in each city receives Climate-KIC coaching post-event. Over 30,000 participants since 2015.