Helsinki's hilarious tourism posters congratulate visitors just for being there

The banner was part of the Slush tech conference last week. Photo / imgur,

Visitors to Helsinki are being congratulated for being brave enough to visit the Finnish capital in the throes of winter - where the average temperature was a frosty 1 degree in November.

In a post on Reddit on Monday, a user shared an image of a large welcome banner, which they said was hanging outside Helsinki Airport.

It read: "Nobody in their right mind would come to Helsinki in November. Except you, you badass. Welcome."

Visit Finland confirmed to indy100 that the banner was real, displayed towards to the centre of the city.

The sign was created for Slush, a tech conference that took place in Helsinki last week.

The CEO of Slush, Marianne Vikkula, told indy100 that Helsinki was "probably the worst possible place you can imagine" in November, with only a few hours of sunlight and "lots of muddy slush on the ground".

"It is quite difficult to promote our otherwise lovely capital," she said. "You might have seen photos of beautiful snowbanks - well, you don't usually find them in Helsinki (they're in Lapland).

Helsinki in winter: 'Lots of muddy slush on the ground'. Photo / Getty Images

"We at Slush have always been about originality and honesty, so we try to take the best out of the sh**y weather."

Despite the self-deprecating attitude, Helsinki had 3.5 million overnight stays by tourists in 2015. More recent figures from Visit Helsinki showed 308,000 overnight stays in September this year.

- nzherald.co.nz