Turf insider January 2026

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Round winners – December (Round #186)

Congratulations to the winners of round December 2025: AJHB from Greater 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

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 and the Turf Year 2025

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