For organizers

Below are the criteria and guidelines that apply to – and must be complied with by – ALL organizers* in order to participate in, respectively, Culture Night and Family Culture Night.

Contents:

• Organizer groups A and B – which group do you belong to?
• Subsidies
• Location within the City of Copenhagen or Frederiksberg Municipality
• Culture Night quality of the event
• Creating and describing an event
• Mandatory presentation of the Culture Night Pass
• Mandatory scanning of digital Culture Night Passes and related requirements
• Access to the event throughout the entire opening hours
• Rules for advance registration
• Collection of materials – pre-order only
• Compliance with deadlines

Read in detail below.

Organizer Groups A and B – which group do you belong to?

The Culture Night Association works with two groups of organizers. Below you can see which group you belong to. In case of doubt, the Culture Night Association will determine which group you fall under.

Group A

• Museums and other permanent exhibition buildings
• Libraries and Arts institutions as well as state, municipal and local archives
• Non-commercial institutions with regular opening hours and with a collection available to the public or with particularly unique attractions
• the Zoo
• Churches or places of worship recognized by the Government.

Group B

• Cultural sites/venues, non-commercial (community halls, educational institutions, etc.)
• Other non-commercial institutions (townhalls, Parliament and ministries)
• Associations, other public administrations or organizations housed in buildings of special architectural or historic interest or which in some other way embrace the concept of culture. However, it is a condition that there is no intent of recruiting members on Culture Night
• Commercial operators (e.g. bookshops, galleries and craftsmen with workshops).

Participation fee for Group B – Culture Night only

All organizers in Group B must pay a participation fee of DKK 3,000. A payment link will be sent automatically upon approval by Culture Night. For the time being, participation in Family Culture Night is free of charge for organizers.

Subsidies

Every year the Culture Night Association awards almost DKK 3 million to events taking place on Culture Night the aim being to heighten the quality of the events. The funds are only granted to events taking place on Culture Night and only to approved organizers. There are no subsidies to Family Culture Night.

To be considered for subsidies, organizers must meet the criteria outlined on this page. Applications for subsidies can then be submitted via the application form found here when the application period is open. On the same page, you will also find guidance and important dates relating to the application process. Only applications from approved organizers will be considered.

Location within the City of Copenhagen or Frederiksberg Municipality

We are called Culture Night in Copenhagen and Frederiksberg, and in order to be considered as an organizer, it is a prerequisite that your event takes place within the City of Copenhagen or Frederiksberg Municipality.

Culture Night quality of the event

As an organizer, you are expected to want to help create unforgettable experiences and to give all visitors a warm welcome. Guests at Culture Night and Family Culture Night expect to experience something truly special and to leave events with the feeling that they have taken part in something extraordinary. All events must therefore be unique and characterised by care and quality. We call this Culture Night quality.

Each organizer is responsible for their own events. It is also the organizer’s responsibility to ensure that all regulatory requirements are met and that the necessary permits are obtained from the municipality, police, fire authorities, etc.

Creating and describing an event

Visitors to both Culture Night and Family Culture Night will be able to read about all events in the programme on the website. It is therefore important that you enter and describe your event using an inviting and reasonably detailed text, and that all important details are clearly stated. The Culture Night Association reserves the right to edit texts. You can find deadlines for creating and describing events, as well as the publication date of the programme, here. It is important to meet the deadline, as no changes can be made to the programme after this point.

For Culture Night, guests who purchase their Culture Night Pass at 7-Eleven will receive a printed overview containing only the name and address of all organizers, not descriptions of individual events. Guests who purchase the Culture Night Pass online will receive a link from which they can download the overview as a PDF.

For Family Culture Night, no printed overview is produced; therefore, information about organizers and planned events is available exclusively on the website.

Mandatory presentation of the Culture Night Pass

The Culture Night Pass provides free access to all events at Culture Night and Family Culture Night.

It is a non-negotiable requirement that all guests present a Culture Night Pass at all events published in the programme on the Culture Night website. It creates a poor and problematic situation if paying guests experience that others are admitted without a Culture Night Pass. Organizers must therefore allocate staff to check that guests have a Culture Night Pass and ensure that no one is admitted without one. We are aware that for certain events in public streets and squares, it is not always possible to check whether guests have a Culture Night Pass.

Mandatory scanning of digital Culture Night Passes and related requirements

All organizers MUST register and scan all guests attending their event; otherwise, the Culture Night Association will miss out on important data that we use to develop and improve the guest experience. Registration is carried out by scanning digital Culture Night Passes. It is the organizer’s responsibility to ensure that scanning can be completed; therefore, the following requirements apply:

• Sufficient staff must be allocated to register guests.
• Phones used for scanning must be no more than five years old.
• Good mobile coverage must be ensured, preferably via Wi-Fi or, if this is not possible, via strong mobile data coverage.

Support in the form of phone rental and/or staff for scanning can be purchased from our supplier Preo. Contact Culture Night to learn more about the available options.

Access to the event throughout the entire opening hours

Culture Night events are aimed at all age groups. Events must take place between 18:00 and 24:00 and must be free and exclusive to guests with a Culture Night Pass. All organizers must open precisely at 18:00. Culture Night Association encourages organizers to keep their institutions open until 24:00, as this is Culture Night’s official opening period. Organizers may close to the public no earlier than 23:00, and this must be clearly stated in the programme. Grant recipients MUST remain open until 24:00.

At Family Culture Night, the target group is children aged 2–5 and 6–12 accompanied by adults, and all events take place between 16:00 and 20:00. All organizers must open their events precisely at 16:00 and remain open until 20:00. Events should preferably be short and ideally repeated throughout the afternoon/evening (flow). Organizers are not required to keep their entire venue open during Family Culture Night; for example, the event may consist of an open children’s workshop in a defined area.

Rules for advance registration

Organizers may not require advance registration for their event without prior agreement with the Culture Night Association, and registration should be avoided as far as possible. Registration may only take place online via Billetto or via the organizer’s own online registration system. Registration must open at a precise time, as many guests are ready to sign up on the day. Find the relevant date for advance registration for your event here. If the event becomes fully booked, please email us so we can indicate this on your programme page.

Collection of materials – pre-order only

We recommend that it is clearly indicated at the organizer’s venue that there is a Culture Night event and that a Culture Night Pass must be shown in order to participate. This makes the check-in process easier for both guests and organizers. Culture Night Association therefore produces streamers with the text “Only for guests with a Culture Night Pass”, and we encourage all organizers to display the streamer together with this year’s poster at the entrance.

Materials can be collected as printed items from the Culture Night Association, or downloaded digitally from our website. If you wish to collect materials physically, it is important to pre-order them in advance. In the past, materials were produced for everyone, but to avoid waste this will no longer happen automatically.

The deadline for ordering and collecting posters and streamers can be found here. It is important to meet the ordering deadline. The collection date and address will also be announced in a newsletter closer to the time.

Compliance with deadlines

All organizers must comply with the specified deadlines, which can be found here. It is important to keep track of dates and deadlines on an ongoing basis, as, for example, late applications will not be considered for subsidies, and no further changes can be made to events after the final deadline for programme entry.

Press and marketing

As an organizer, you are of course very welcome to use your own marketing channels to promote events at Culture Night and Family Culture Night.

In your own marketing of events, it must be clearly stated that access is ONLY for guests with a Culture Night Pass (this also applies to social media such as Facebook or Instagram). It must not be stated that something is “free”, as this may give guests the impression that they do not need a Culture Night Pass to participate. Instead, it can be phrased, for example, as “with the Culture Night Pass, admission to the event is free”.

When creating your event on the Culture Night Association’s website, the photo used must be cleared for press use so that the Culture Night Association may use the photo in press-related contexts. Please remember to clearly state who should be credited for the image.

*If an organizer fails to comply with the above guidelines from the Culture Night Association, we reserve the right to exclude the organizer the following year.