Experience Gävle's biggest celebrity in December. From the first advent, the thirteen-meter-high straw goat adorns Slottstorget in Gävle. 2022 was a historic year for the world's largest straw goat, which for the first time in 56 years gets a temporary new location in Gävle. During the construction of the new cultural center Agnes Kulturhus, the Gävle Goat gets to take pride of place on the Town Hall Esplanade, Rådhusesplanaden, in central Gävle. The inauguration of the Gävle Goat is thus moved from Slottstorget to Stortorget.
The peculiar story about the Gävle Goat started in 1966, when the idea came up to design a giant version of the traditional Swedish Christmas straw goat. The objective was to attract customers to the shops and restaurants in the southern part of the city. On the first Sunday of Advent 1966, the huge goat was placed at Slottstorget in Gävle. Since then, the Gävle Goat has been a Christmas symbol placed in the same spot every year. Today he is world famous. The Gävle Goat made it to the Guinness Book of Records for the first time in 1985. Each year, hundreds of thousands of fans from all around the world follow him via webcam and social media (Twitter and Instagram). Why the pixels? The purpose of the Gävle Goat's webcam is to show him off to curious fans around the world. People walking by may not want to be seen in the picture, so for privacy reasons parts of the broadcast are pixelated.