Turf Insider is a monthly newsletter written and edited by Munin. It is part of Turf End News, an e-mail sent to those users who has signed up to recieve e-mails from Turf.
Technical issues have prevented the sending of the monthly mail to users during February.
Round winners – January 2026 (Round #187)
Congratulations to the winners of round January 2026: AJHB from Greater London won his third Gold in a row, nicos from Berlin added one more Silver to his medal row and JimmyAIK94 from Stockholm braved the cold nights to secure a Bronze. This round no one collected over 1 million points, the winter cold takes its toll. Still, well done mates!
AJHB is the fourth turfer to take three Gold Medals back to back. Welshman has the record of four Gold Medals in a row, he did this back in 2021.
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 :)
SåsTurf, 25th of April, 2026 in Alingsås, Sweden
MaXi is again organising SåsTurf. This year it will be in and around the lovely Floraskogen in Alingsås. More information HERE!
SCOnanza 5-7th of June, 2026 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Dangermous and his fellow Scottish turfers are looking forward to welcoming Turfers from Scotland and beyond for SCOnanza in Glasgow, 5-7 June 2026. Expect some novel events and lively venues across the city. Put it in the diary now! Details will follow.
Bonanza 2026 – September 5th in Gothenburg Sweden
The registration for this year's Bonanza is now open. Read more on Turf Göteborg's webpages.
Swedish info HERE.
English info HERE.
The Göteborg turfers welcome you all to the West side of Sweden for some good Bonanza fun in September.
A Zone Worthy of a Detour – by edjur
The zone "Hästhallen" (The Horse Hall) in the southeast corner of Sweden (Blekinge) is worthy of a detour. I was there in July of 2025 while on vacation with my mother who has taken up archeology as a hobby after retirement. We therefore needed to visit these amazing rock carvings from the Bronze Age while in Blekinge. There was no zone at the time, however, I put in a zone suggestion since the place really needed one. :-) My suggestion became a zone in September, and the detour to visit is really worth the effort!
Thank you edjur for your contribution! If you have your own special zone you'd like to tell the Turf World about, send a paragraph or two about it to insider@turfgame.com and let the Turf community learn more about it!
Beta testing
An important task when upgrading Turf and adding new features, is the beta testing of new versions of the app. You can sign up to be a Beta tester in the Play store where you download the Turf app. Many do this, but however some seem to forget about it and this was obvious this January when a new beta version of Turf saw the light. Posts on Social media described problems with taking zones and turfers did not know why. It was almost always explained by them using the new Beta version of Turf without knowing it. Information was sent out in the app to all users.
Beta testing is very important, and the developers of Turf are very grateful to everyone participating in the Beta test program. It can be a thankless job when strange bugs happen, but it is very important. So thank you all Beta testers out there!
Turfing in the cold 2026 - Kygni shares his experience
When I saw the weather forecast for a few places further north, I decided to go there in the hopes of experiencing -40 degrees, a few degrees colder than my super cold Turf session two years ago. On the 8th of january I took the bus to Kiruna with my bike. I biked from Kiruna to Svappavaara in as low as -32 degrees Celsius, but about two thirds on the way a kind person picked me up and drove me and my bike to my Airbnb in Svappavaara. On the 9th of january, I started at -23 degrees in Svappavaara and when I had biked to Vittangi, it had gotten as cold as -34 degrees. In the beginning of that bike trip, a moose litterally jumped about 10 meters in front of me while I biked. On the 10th of january, my thermometer showed -38.5 as the coldest, right before I biked and took all the zones in Vittangi.
On the 11th I biked from Vittangi to Svappavaara in about -31 degrees, I met a truck driver who had had an accident with a reindeer, which is not surprising since they are often on the roads up there and do not care about traffic. I also had one of my top 5 aurora moments on the way between Vittangi and Svappavaara, which is saying a lot considering I almost live inside the arctic circle. I didn´t get to experience -40C yet, but I will soon enough.
Editor's Opinion
I joined Turf Crew 10 years ago because I thought it would be fun to make zones. It is a lot of fun, but also sometimes a bit thankless. There has been zone issues about placement (most are valid since it is hard to make zones from a far in a place you've never visited), zone name and even turfers upset about being credited with the "Zone Suggestion Accepted" since the zone was not EXACTLY where they suggested it! (anyone who placed a zone suggestion within 200 m of the zone, gets this message).
Zones should be 25 by 25 meters in order for the GPS to work at least ok in most places. Sometimes this will mean that a zone is likely to cover at least part of someone's private garden or a railroad track. One such zone of mine is GlömTräsket, centered on the bike/foot path next to the railroad, but it also covers the rail track since otherwise it might be hard to take from the bike/foot path.
Another big no-no among turfers who write issues is to put the zone where it can be easily taken by car, and especially if the turfer can stay IN the car while taking the zone. I am guilty of making "car friendly" zones since the option has been not to put a zone at all in that area. This happens most often in residential areas where bike or foot paths are nowhere to be seen or they are very close to a car road. Again, the option is to not have a zone on this nice path in this area and then I am ok with having people occasionally take it by car.
I was once asked by a fellow zone maker if he should grant the local turfers' wish to have a zone by the food market in the city, even though it would be partly on the road, and accessible by car. I told him, he should put a zone there since it was a single car friendly zone in that part of the city. And again, most of the time the zone is taken by foot or by bike. I would never make the majority of zones in an area car friendly, but the odd zone here and there, why not? Especially if the option is no zone at all!
Zones I've made have also been totally trashed in social media for being in the wrong area of a city since "no one is turfing there". Well, maybe the reason no one is turfing there, is that there is no zones in that area! And I also rarely make zones without basing them on zone suggestions in the Turf app, so obviously someone made a zone suggestion in that place where "no one is turfing".
Despite the guidelines for zonemaking, it is still the personal choice of a zone maker where to put the zone. The reasons behind where a zone ends up, are as many as there are zone makers in Crew. And it is still fun to make zones! HERE you can read another zone maker's personal opinion about zone making, it dates back to 2020, but is definitely worth a read.
Turf Picture of the Month
Turf Picture of the Month in January is GappyPier sent in by HappyF.
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.
The registration for this years Bonanaza is now open!
Read more on our webpages:
Svenska
www.turfgoteborg.se/2025/09/06/bonanza-2026/
English
www.turfgoteborg.se/2025/09/06/bonanza-2026-2/
Welcome
Turf Göteborg
Round winners – December (Round #186)
Congratulations to the winners of round December 2025: AJHB fromGreater London won his second Gold, Király from Skåne made an amazing sprint in the last week of the round and took home another Silver and nicos added one more Bronze to his medal row. 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 :)
SCOnanza 5-7th of June, 2026 in Glasgow, Scotland, UK
Dangermous and his fellow Scottish turfers are looking forward to welcoming Turfers from Scotland and beyond for SCOnanza in Glasgow, 5-7 June 2026. Expect some novel events and lively venues across the city. Put it in your diary now! Details to follow next year.
Bonanza 2026 – September 5th in Gothenburg Sweden
Just a reminder to book a long weekend in Gothenburg in September 2026. Information about the Bonanza can be found HERE (in Swedish) and HERE (in English).
Turf Skåne's Advent Calender was a great success and you can read about all the winners HERE (only in Swedish). Prizes have to be collected in person or at the Bonanza in Gothenburg this year in September. I hope everyone who took part had a great time :)
A Zone Worthy of a Detour – by ojarnstr
The lake in the middle of the Archipelago Sea in Finland. On the small island of Björkö you can visit two zones worthy of a detour, Björkö and Saaristomeri. Where only a few meters separate the salty sea water and the lake of Björkö, that was cut off from the sea due to land uplift in the 18th century.
There is a nature trail that goes around the lake that is just over two kilometers long. The brisk walker can walk the nature trail in about an hour, but for a more thorough exploration of nature, it is worth reserving a little more time than that. There is much to see along the trail and beautiful landscapes to admire.
A hundred years ago, there were three farms and about fifteen people living on Björkö. Now it has been about twenty years since the last permanent residents left the island. But in the summer it can even get crowded, the natural harbor in Byviken is one of the most popular in the Archipelago.
Thank you ojarnstr for your contribution! If you have your own special zone you'd like to tell the Turf World about, send a paragraph or two about it to insider@turfgame.com and let the Turf community learn more about it!
Drassen, one of the persons behind Turf, has put together a few words to summarize the Turf Year 2025:
A
new TURF year!
Yet
another year has passed where loads of zones have changed owners, new
places have been discovered, and addiction to being outdoors has
flourished.
A
first this year was when the organized and lovely Scots arranged the
first ever Bonanza abroad. A whole weekend was arranged where events
and gatherings took place in Edinburgh. Don´t miss out on future
events in Scotland!
Development-wise
we restarted development on iPhone with the help of a new great part
time developer. It was a steep hill to take on at first, but now it
is easier to take on future quests in the iOs jungle. On Android we
added new assist features this year and some other minor things.
We
are currently working on an update that resolves the "armpit"
bug that has been around for too long. It was never intended to be a
part of the game and it is about time we try to fix it.
We
hope 2026 will bring you lots of time to get outside, compete, and
meet new people in our wonderful community.
Happy
new year!
//Drassen
Editor's Opinion
During the December round, armpitting was put in the spotlight again. A post in Turf Stockholms Facebook group kicked off the discussion and several Zone issues later (none was acted on, since the issue here isn't with certain zone because you can armpit ANY zone), another issue was submitted, addressing the root problem of armpitting, read it HERE.
There are currently two ways to armpit: the Classical Armpit (CA), where you block the phone's GPS signal with a body part (most commonly used is the turfer's armpit hence the name). This variant has been around almost since the beginning of Turf and is due to a bug in the programming of the Turf app (as Drassen wrote in his New Year's message). It has been mainly an Android ”feature” since it's been extremely difficult to block the GPS signal in iPhones.
Lately, due to changes in the set-up of Android phones, a Technical Armpit variant (TA) has surged. It is based on a specific location setting (only allowing the Turf app access to the phone's location data if the Turf app is actively used) and requires nothing but putting the Turf app in the background by for example opening another app once you've started taking the zone. This requires nothing but quick fingers.
Personally I think any GPS manipulation is cheating, no matter if it's GPS spoofing from your home computer, blocking the GPS signal by blocking it by a body part (CA) or blocking the Turf app from accessing the phone's location (TA). I have tried armpitting myself, both variants, but I just don't see the fun in it. For me, Turf is an Outdoor activity, not something you should spend hours doing on public transport or in your car. If you want a game where the main activity is to fiddle on your phone, I'd recommend PokémonGo or similar games.
In December a letter addressing armpitting was sent to Turf Insider, bringing up the fuzzy rules that came in 2017/2018. The first variant of TA was solved by a programming update at this time. The wordings about ”The phone must be in the zone when take over begins” was a compromise since the programming bug permitting CA was hard to address and abuse already gets too many reports about armpitting being against the rules. As long as there is no programming fix to armpitting, it is a loophole in the rules. It does not make it right, in my opinion and it was not meant as a part of the game either (see Drassen's words above).
TA not only shortens the take time significantly, it also masks where the turfer is heading, a problem identified during an open Event in 2023. After discussion in Crew at the time, it was decided that it was up to each Event organiser to decide if this strategy was ok or not in their Event. Most have decided to state it is NOT ok, since it gives a huge advantage to any player using TA. Also during normal game play, you will save time by using TA and the built-in function of "take time" (the time it takes to take over zone) disappears completely from the game. Use of TA is behind the Fastest Ferret (10 zones in the shortest time – see Warded).
TA ruins the game in so many ways, but above all, it takes away the very spirit of "Outdoor Addiction". That someone armpits a zone now and then during their commute can be annoying, but has not had any great impact on the game play. But now that several turfers especially in the Stockholm area have made TA their main strategy to get points and are spending more and more time on public transport just to take over zones in this fashion, has become a scourge that negatively affects the game and the other players. Players who lose zones lose points (pph), which means that many others are affected by this (in my opinion, undesirable and unsportsmanlike Turf behavior)
The few who play unsportsmanlike are clearly noticeable, armpitting are not just noise any longer. If you know what to look for it is very obvious if someone is TA a multitude of zones, and they ruin leaderboards, statistics, who wins Gold, Silver and Bronze, R and C medals. The tagline "Outdoor addiction" no longer applies because turfers can get high scores sitting in the warmth of commuter trains and buses. Some turfers take between 25-90% of their zones/points by TA on trains/buses. If your total score one round is several hundred thousand points, this is a significant part of your points.
This
is especially unsportsmanlike during the colder months where the
weather conditions can limit turfing significantly. I am looking
forward to the new version of the Turf app where, hopefully,
armpitting in any form will no longer be possible. I also wish it was
decided that you can't take part in any of the more competitive
aspects of Turf, if you do not use the latest version of the app.
Turf Picture of the Month
Turf Picture of the Month in December is CouldBeAFlood sent in by Wintergreen. Six contributions this month :)
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.
