Finnish fandom had a planning meeting over the weekend, and one of the decisions taken was that they would roll over their Worldcon bid to 2017. I know no more than that right now, but I am assuming they’ll be bidding the same facilities, and the same team, that lost so narrowly to Spokane.
The other bids for 2017 are Japan and Montréal.
A Helsinki win would, of course, be very helpful for the Dublin in 2019 bid.
I wish I’d been able to announce that live on the BBC. Ah well, I did get to enthuse about Finnish conventions.
Looks like Worldcon is going to start living up to the name! Nice to know Helsinki is going to bid again.
With no offense to any of the bids, I’m personally hoping that some tier 1 US sites jump into 2017-2020. While no one of the 2017-2020 bids is a bad idea (OK, I’m on the fence about whether New Zealand is; depends on how many Aussie fans they reasonably expect to draw. With NZ natcons drawing 200ish, I could see an NZ Worldcon drawing less than 1000), I really don’t want to see an effective repeat of 2007-2010 with three out of US Worldcons and the fourth in a relatively isolated location in the US. This sort of schedule hurts Worldcon long term vis a vis attendance and relative importance to attend it.
Why would a Helsinki win helpful for Dublin?
See Tom below.
Presumably because that means if the voting for 2019 (in 2017) took place in Europe, another European site would be more likely to win than if the vote was held in Japan or Montreal.