Turf — the real world GPS game

Turf is a location-based game you play outdoors. Zones are placed across real streets, parks and trails all over the world — walk or cycle to one, stay there for a minute, and it is yours. You collect points, climb the leaderboards, and tend to walk a lot further than you planned.

Free to play on Android and iOS
Over 150,000 zones worldwide
A new round starts every month — everyone from zero

New here? Read how to get started · See the zones near you

Over the past weeks we have done a lot of work under the hood to introduce Resting hour: a short break between two rounds.

We plan to launch Resting hour between the November and December rounds. Before then we will release a new version of the app, which you will need in order to keep playing. More on that later.

Until then, a heads-up: with this much new code already in place, there is a greater risk of problems around the round start. If something unexpected happens, we may postpone the start of the round. In that case the app will tell you when the game opens again.

Thanks for your patience, and see you on the map!

//Turf Crew

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Turf Insider is a monthly newsletter written and edited by Munin

Round winners – August 2026 (Round #194)

Congratulations to the winners of round August 2026: Sven_R from Berlin took his first Gold with almost 2 million points, Király from Skåne came in second and got another Silver and kjtindall from Scotland came third and ended the round with his first Bronze while aiming for Roundpointer 1 million. Well done mates!

Upcoming events

If you are organising an open event, don't forget to write to insider@turfgame.com a couple of months in advance to get the information about your event into the newsletter :)

SthlmBike26 - 19th of September in Stockholm, Sweden

Stockholm Bike Open organized by Turf08 will be held on Saturday 19^th of September at 13:00 – 15:00, this time in Nackareservatet. Price ceremony and meeting point at the regular zone Karrzone. The winner will receive the TURF08 bike trophy! Everyone who participates will be rewarded an event medal. More info HERE.

DxHalloween - 31^st of October in Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg, Germany

DxHalloween will once again take place on October 31st at Ohlsdorf Cemetery in Hamburg. It starts at 3:30 PM and runs until 5:30 PM. Afterward, we’ll all go grab something to eat, though the location hasn't been decided yet. It will be a closed event, so you will have to sign up and you can do it HERE. It will be a combined Foot and Bike event. For questions, you can e-mail the organiser DXP2K at dxevents@pepperland.de

Bonanza 2026 – September 5th in Gothenburg, Sweden

Turf Göteborg was the organisers of this year's Bonanza. It brought turfers from at least 4 different countries. 227 turfers took at least one zone in the Foot event and 97 turfers took at least one zone in the Bike event. The weather was cloudy with a few rain drops.

In the Foot event, Skräddaren_ won Gold, RiddervanMyyl came second and 19JakeBauer came third. All recieved a medal and the winner got a special trophy. The turfer closest to the average points also got a medal (Midpoint award). In the Foot event, this medal went to Monals.

Monals, RiddervanMyyl, Skräddaren_ and 19JakeBauer.

In the Bike event DaHunter won Gold, followed by Tempest (2^nd place) and recycling (3^rd place). The Midpoint award went to siamosaurus.

Tempest, siamosaurus, DaHunter and recycling.

Pictures from Turf Göteborg and the full text (in Swedish only) can be found HERE.

It is always fun to ask turfers to write about a specific topic. Last round turfer morgam was explaning how special it was to take the zone Vattungarna. Since no one had sent in a contribution for A Zone worthy of a detour, I asked him to write a couple of paragraphs about his take of this zone. I got a lot more, I hope you find it as intestesting as I did!

A Zone worthy of a Detour – by morgam

”I’m the kind of turfer who doesn’t take very many zones anymore — and hasn’t done so for quite some time. I’m the kind of turfer who occasionally remembers to turn on the app when I know I’m standing in or near a zone, or simply to see whether there is one nearby when I’m visiting a new place.

I’m the kind of turfer who wishes I had the time and stamina to go on those long turf sessions, the same as yesterday and the day before — these sessions that clear your mind, makes you recognise every cobblestone in the neighbourhood, lead to unexpected encounters at odd hours of the day, and once in a while take you to places you would otherwise never have seen.

I wonder sometimes why I still keep the app. Perhaps it is because I don’t want to lose touch with the possibility of being that kind of turfer — or because it allows me to remain part of a community of people I would otherwise have little contact with, all sharing the same crazy fascination with red and yellow figures on a map.

Still, every now and then I do turn on Turf in a new place. I remembered to do so after lunch with one of my brothers, just before we were due to collect a kayak and head out into Stockholm’s northern archipelago. The trip had been planned at fairly short notice, but the weather looked promising and, after a warm summer, the water was pleasantly warm.

Naturally, my head was full of everything we needed to bring, where it should be stowed in the tiny compartments and what ought to be left in the car. Once everything was ready, however, I had some time to spare while my brother parked the car. Instead of checking yet again where the spare compass had been stowed, it occurred to me that there might be a zone out on the jetty behind the kiosk. Sure enough, there was a zone I had never visited before. A fine start to the trip.

After that, however, my thoughts returned entirely to getting out onto the water — and to working out where we were actually going, beyond simply “out”. The wind was southerly, with gusts of just over ten metres per second. Once we reached the open water, the wind and waves began tossing the kayak around.

The area consists of open stretches of water where the wind and waves can gather strength, followed by small clusters of islands forming miniature archipelagos of their own. The archipelago is sparse there, and you soon find yourself looking out towards the horizon.

On the second day, we set our course for Vattungarna. It proved to be a landmass of surprises, with long inlets containing sheltered little inner archipelagos where we could glide quietly along despite the strong breeze out on the open water. Our hammock setup required trees of a suitable size and the right distance apart, and we found just what we needed inside one of the inlets.

One of my concerns was the worn-out battery in my old Sony Xperia. I can manage without a mobile phone for a few days, but for safety reasons I did not want to drain the battery by leaving the phone switched on. It spent most of the time tucked away, although I turned it on for a while that evening and by chance I activated the Turf app. Could there possibly be any zones all the way out there in the archipelago?

I remember Entertainer’s and Florence’s Turf kayaking story from a few years ago. It was a considerably longer journey across open water than I attempted on this trip. I was reminded of their story again the third day, when we battled waves 70 to 80 cms high, on our way south with headwind, after a detour round the skerry of Marren, a few hundred meters northwest of Vattungarna. At that moment, I was grateful that we had not ventured any farther out onto the open water. Losing focus for a moment would result in unpleasant consequences. I fantasised of drifting off in a water filled kayak all the way to Åland.

But there, in the calm summer evening, surrounded by countless swallows chattering and hunting around us, I opened the Turf app. Lo and behold, there was a zone less than a hundred metres farther into the inlet, right where we had paddled earlier that evening.

The island was difficult to cross, so there was little point in trying to fight my way there wearing sandals in the evening. The following day, however, I decided to sacrifice some battery life, hoping for sufficient mobile coverage and take the detour into the inlet to collect a unique zone. The chances of me ever finding myself there again were slim, and we were in no hurry.

And that brings me to another of Turf’s attractions: the data, tables and statistics. The zone was less than a year old. The Cat had claimed the FTT in May, and according to turfgame.com, I was the second person to take it. I don’t know whether I have ever come so close to getting an FTT in many years, definitely not in the last 10 years. I did not get to keep and enjoy the zone for very long though, because the round reset less than two days later.

Isn't this the beauty of Turf — and many people have said it before: there are so many different ways to play. You can take 400 zones a day, month after month, or take that many, or less, over the course of an entire year. Only whenever the mood strikes and you happen to remember — or just anything in between, in Turf's all many dimensions.”

If you have a story about a special zone, don't hesitate to write a few paragraphs about it and when you took it and send to insider@turfgame.com and please include at least one picture from the zone!

Editor's Opinion/Corner

An important part of the Bonanza is the Bonanza Banquet with the revealing of next year's Bonanza city. Sadly this year, our Bonanza general MiniHolger had been unable to find a group of people willing to take on the Bonanza 2027.

Is it because people think it is too much work? Yes, it is the World Championship of Turf, and this comes with a few expectations, like a Bonanza venue with access to showers which in Sweden can be fairly easily organised by renting a local sport club's club house (which the Gothenburg organising team did).

Some kind of food is often also expected at the Bonanza venue before, during and after the Events. The Gothenburg team sold hamburgers, hot dogs, coffee, one kind of bun, some drinks and bananas! The sport club's Kiosk (staffed by turfers from the Gothenburg Bonanza team) had soda, candy and lighter snacks for those hungry turfers. I am sure the local sport club could take care of the entire feeding of the turfers if asked.

People, or at least I, also expect a Bonanza T-shirt :) This year it was a lovely red. This does require a bit of organising, keeping track of who ordered, who paid and so on.

A Bonanza Banquet is also required and this is getting harder and harder to find good places for. The Gothenburg team used the Union restaurant at the University and it was a great success. In my mind, this is most likely the hardest part to figure out, so if you can think of a good place for the Banquet, you are halfway there to organizing next year's Bonanza! The Gothenburg team was 6-7 people working together for 1,5 years to pull off the Bonanza. Two years earlier the team organising the Bonanza in Enköping was about the same size and they got it done in about one year. At the Bonanza day itself, more people helped out and contributed to the success of the event.

From what I have learned about Bonanza planning, it does require a small dedicated group of about 6-10 people where each one has specific tasks, such as keeping track of payments, registration for the different events, organizing the banquet, making sure things run smoothly on the day itself. As far as the economy, the Gothenburg team required non-refundable pre-payment for the t-shirt and the banquet, so this meant very little economical risk for the people and team involved. The biggest worry for the Gothenburg team was people registering late for the event, since a good Bonanza should have just the right amount of zones in respect to participants. I remember this myself from the Bonanza in Enköping 2024 when I was adding zones to the Event the night before because we got a few more registrations to the two Events.

However, if you have been involved in organizing any kind of Open Turf Event, a Bonanza is within your scope. Yes, it is bigger and might therefore feel scarier and like a lot of work, but the requirements are basically the same. So, if you feel this is how you want to spend about 50 hours during the next 12 months, get a group together and write to contact@turfgame.com and you will organize Bonanza 2027!

Turf Picture of the Month

Turf Picture of the Month in August is SnackaOmBro sent in by Fafng.

If you have a Zone picture you want featured as Turf Picture of the Month, send it to insider@turfgame.com Please include your Turf nick for recognition!

Turfa lugnt/Safe turfing!

//Munin

...if you want to contribute to future Turf Insiders, send your story to insider@turfgame.com :) C'mon and share your big and small stories with the Turf world.

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We have made upgrades of the TurfWiki page.

You no longer need a separate wiki account. If you are logged in here at turfgame.com, just go to wiki.turfgame.com — you are signed in there too, under your player name followed by ~Turf. No form, no extra password. Log out here and you are logged out there. If you see a "Forbidden" message, make sure you are logged in!

If you already have a wiki account, it works exactly as before. Same username, same password, same history. Nothing was touched.

What is no longer possible (and not needed any longer) is registering a new separate wiki account yourself. Spam accounts had come to outnumber the real ones.

TurfWiki is written by turfers, for turfers: zone guides, rules, medals, events and everything else worth knowing. If you find something wrong or missing please contribute by editing the page. That is the whole point.

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We are currently rolling out new app versions on Android and iphone with lots of fixes. some of them are:

-Matching calendar view

-Supporter subscription on ios

-turf store button in help

-Ipad screen fix
-animations when buying suporter days
-bug fixes

AND
New ranks for those 10 of you who are insane enough to be up there at 60.
The new ranks are 61-65 and they do not change the takeover time.
Interestingly enough one or two of the new ranks have already been passed.

/Turf dev
(and thanks for all ideas and reports from the bonanza. dont forget to use the issue system)

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We recently asked you what you enjoy most about the game. Across hundreds of responses, your feedback highlights three core themes that make Turf a favorite daily companion. Maybe nothing new, but here we go:

Getting Outside & Exercise: For the vast majority of players, Turf provides the ultimate "push" or motivation to leave the house, get some fresh air, and incorporate physical activity—whether walking, running, or cycling—into their daily routines without it feeling like a chore.
Exploring New Places: Players love how the game acts as a personal tour guide, leading them to hidden gems, unique zones, historical monuments, and scenic spots in their local neighborhoods and while traveling abroad that they would never have discovered otherwise.
Community & Competition: Beyond fitness and exploration, users value the social connections, friendly competition, local events, and the shared camaraderie among fellow Turfers.

Stay tuned for more questions now and then, and don't forget to upgrade to the latest app version to avoid the popup when you don't want it.

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Turf Insider is a monthly newsletter written and edited by Munin

Round winners – July 2026 (Round #193)

Congratulations to the winners of round July 2026: IndoorsyHermit from Skåne spent a lot of time outdoorsy to take his second Gold, Király from Skåne came in second and got another Silver and Hblom from Åland came third and ended the round with his first Bronze. Well done mates!