Venue	Area	Capacity	Mostly
Tavastia	Punavuori	400	Rock, indie, touring bills
Kuudes Linja	Kallio	250	Experimental, club nights
Kaiku	Sornainen	900	Electronic, late
On the Rocks	Kamppi	300	Metal, hardcore
Bar Loose	Kamppi	180	Local bills, free entry nights
Storyville	Toolo	150	Jazz, seated
Korjaamo	Toolo	600	Folk, world, festivals
Semifinal	Punavuori	120	First shows, demos

Tavastia

The oldest continuously operating rock club in the Nordics, open since 1970 in a former workers hall. The stage is low and there is no pit barrier, which changes how a show feels more than any amount of production does. Sound is consistent; the front-of-house engineers have been there long enough to know the room resonances by heart.

Kuudes Linja

Two connected rooms in Kallio, with the smaller one used for support sets and the larger for club programmes that run past three. Bookings lean toward the experimental end — drone, improvised music, techno — and the crowd will stand still and listen in a way that surprises visiting bands.

Kaiku

A concrete basement built for a soundsystem, with almost nothing to look at and that being the point. Doors are late, and the room does not fill until well after midnight. Bring cash for the cloakroom; the queue for it is the only real bottleneck.

Smaller rooms

Semifinal, downstairs from Tavastia, takes bands playing their second or third show ever, and tickets are usually under fifteen euros. Bar Loose runs free-entry local bills most weeknights. Both are worth walking into without checking who is playing.