International umbrella organization

International Sauna Association

EST. 1958 · Reborn 1977 in Helsinki

The international umbrella body for national sauna associations, founded in 1958 in Germany and re-established in Helsinki in 1977. Four founding members. Roughly twenty national members. The body that sets the technical definition of sauna and runs the International Sauna Congress every four years.

Why this matters

The International Sauna Association is the only body that gets to define “sauna” at international scale. Its 1999 Aachen Definition is the technical instrument it uses to draw that line: a wooden room with stepped benches at roughly 80 to 105 degrees Celsius, heated by a stone-filled oven, with low humidity briefly raised by water infusion. The definition explicitly excludes infrared cabins, which radiate heat directly onto the body rather than heating the air.

That exclusion matters because the largest residential sauna market in North America is infrared cabins. ISA's standard puts them in a different product category. President Risto Elomaa has publicly called electrical sauna stoves “toaster saunas” and has described his standards work as combating misleading claims about “infrared saunas,” which he argues are fundamentally different products. The position is consistent. It is also unfashionable.

For consumers, the practical question is whether ISA's standard matters to your decision. If you are buying a traditional Finnish-style sauna with a stone-filled stove and the option to pour water for steam, ISA's frame describes what you are buying. If you are buying an infrared cabin, the ISA does not consider it a sauna at all. Both products exist. Both have customers. The ISA standard is a definitional choice with editorial and regulatory weight, not a quality verdict.

History

The ISA was founded in 1958 with its initial office in Germany. The Union of International Associations' yearbook records the founding country as West Germany. After what ISA's own homepage describes as “20 years of quite slow activities,” the organisation was reborn in 1977 in Helsinki, Finland, where its office has remained ever since.

There is a small inconsistency between the founding narrative and the bylaws. ISA's homepage treats 1958 as the founding date and 1977 as a revival, but its bylaws describe the founder members as the organisations that “established ISA in 1977.” The simplest reading: ISA was founded in 1958, lay largely dormant, and was relaunched and re-registered in Helsinki in 1977. The 1977 relaunch is the legal-corporate moment ISA still operates under. The 1958 date is the original founding.

The four founding member nations have been continuously represented since 1977. Three of the four are profiled in this hub:

• Germany, through the Deutscher Sauna-Bund, founded 1949 in Bielefeld
• Finland, through the Finnish Sauna Society (Suomen Saunaseura), founded 1937
• Japan, through the Japan Sauna-Spa Association, with a lineage to the 1971 Japan Sauna Party and an incorporated form since 1990
• Austria, through the Österreichisches Sauna Forum (the Austrian Sauna Forum), founded 1995 (no Heated Retreat profile)

ISA is registered in Helsinki as a Finnish association (Finnish suffix “r.y.” for rekisteröity yhdistys). Its mailing address, Vaskiniementie 10 in Helsinki, is the address of the Finnish Sauna Society's Vaskiniemi facility. The international body shares premises with one of its founder members, and the presidency has remained in Finnish hands throughout the 1977-onward era.

The board expanded from 9 to 12 in January 2023, the maximum permitted by the bylaws. The expansion added representatives from the United States, the United Kingdom, and Sweden, broadening ISA's reach beyond its historic Central European, Nordic, and Japanese axis.

Mission

ISA's homepage states its mission verbatim:

“ISA and its members shall pursue the goal of publicizing the sauna and promoting its use on a global scale by rallying supporters of sauna activities in different countries.”

The UIA yearbook records the mission slightly differently, framing it closer to research and standards work and describing ISA's aim as promoting “scientific study on sauna from different viewpoints.”

Both framings sit underneath four stated goals published on ISA's own site:

• Acceptance and promotion of the 1999 Aachen Sauna Definition.
• Advancement of scientific sauna studies across social history, folklore, medicine, and technology.
• Archival collection and compilation of sauna-related research and written materials.
• Operation of Sauna Aid, the mobile-sauna humanitarian arm.

Risto Elomaa has additionally cited UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage recognition for Finnish sauna culture as an ISA priority. Finnish sauna culture was independently inscribed on the UNESCO list in 2020 through Finland's national submission; ISA positions itself as an advocate within that broader effort rather than the lead applicant.

Membership

ISA operates four membership tiers, defined in its bylaws. Vote weight reflects the privilege the founder members carry inside the General Meeting.

A core governance provision restricts membership to one organisation per country. Where multiple applicants exist, the executive board decides which one becomes or remains the member. This is the rule that anchored the North American Sauna Society in the United States seat without disputing other industry bodies.

Founder members are guaranteed at least one board seat each. The executive board can hold between 5 and 12 members. The bylaws specify board terms of two years; current practice runs four-year terms aligned with the quadrennial International Sauna Congress. Risto Elomaa was reconfirmed for “another four years” at the October 2022 General Assembly in Helsinki.

General Meetings convene roughly every two years with three months' notice. Decisions pass by simple majority; bylaw changes require a two-thirds majority. Dissolution requires a two-thirds quorum and a three-quarters majority, and any residual assets are donated to the International Red Cross. ISA is “managed in an honorary capacity,” meaning members receive no material distributions. Member liability is limited to ISA's assets plus any unpaid dues.

Events and publications

The International Sauna Congress

The ISA convenes the International Sauna Congress every four years. The first congress predates ISA's founding by two years: it was held in Bielefeld, Germany in 1956. ISA's own materials describe seventeen congresses through the late 2010s before the XVIII at Stuttgart in 2022. The numbering between Düsseldorf 1978 and Bad Aachen 1999 is not enumerated on ISA's public pages and should be treated as approximate.

XVIII Stuttgart 2022 was held in parallel with Interbad at Messe Stuttgart with KLAFS as primary sponsor. Four programme streams ran: Sauna and Health, Sauna Economically, Sauna in Technical Change, and Quo Vadis Sauna.

XIX Oslo 2026 runs 24 to 26 September 2026, opening at Oslo City Hall (where the Nobel Peace Prize is awarded) with the main programme at SALT Art and Music on the Oslo fjord and The Well as primary spa partner. The Norwegian organisers expect roughly 500 participants. A Floating Sauna Night on Friday 25 September will use Oslo's floating sauna villages for communal bathing. Sauna Aid donations are integrated into the registration flow.

Sauna Aid

Sauna Aid is a multi-country humanitarian initiative ISA sponsors. It is incorporated separately in the United States as the International Sauna Aid Foundation, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with Mikkel Aaland as president, and operates as ISA's humanitarian arm sharing the Helsinki address.

The precedent that inspired Sauna Aid happened in 2011. After the Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami and the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident, ISA and the Japan Sauna-Spa Association maintained a tent sauna on-site for five weeks, used for decontamination, cleaning, and warming over a thousand local residents. Mikkel Aaland has stated that the memory of the Fukushima response directly inspired the formal Sauna Aid launch eleven years later. When Russia invaded Ukraine in February 2022, Aaland emailed Risto Elomaa proposing a mobile sauna convoy to refugee areas. Elomaa contacted ISA's network, and the response was, in Aaland's account, “overwhelmingly positive.”

Documented deployments include a Finnish-military-spec tent sauna in central Kharkiv (capacity 20, tested in Helsinki in March 2022), a Pixxla container sauna near the eastern Russian border, a 14-person sauna donated by Therme Group to a youth sports centre in Staryi Sambir, and Edjusta saunas in Staryi Sambir, Kupyansk, and Kherson. Free sauna sessions for Ukrainian refugees in Lithuania run in partnership with the Lithuanian Bath Academy. In October 2022, wood-burning tent saunas were deployed to Ukrainian churches in Minneapolis and Chicago to support people aiding Ukrainian refugees in the United States. In January 2025, portable wood-burning saunas went to firefighters working the Southern California wildfires.

Research, archive, and journal

ISA states it pursues archival collection of sauna-related research and written materials. The closest publicly accessible artifact is saunaliteratur.de, a database of scientific literature about saunas created by the Deutscher Sauna-Bund in collaboration with Professor Eberhard Conradi and the ISA. Contact for the database runs through the Sauna-Bund's Bielefeld office.

A separate proposal, the International Journal of Sauna Studies across health science, history and culture, and technology and design, was floated in a 2016 academic paper. The proposed saunaresearch.org domain was unreachable when we checked, and ISA's own Research and Science portal does not reference the journal by name. The proposal appears not to have produced a sustained output.

Leadership

Risto Elomaa has been President of the International Sauna Association since 2010 and was reconfirmed for a four-year term at the October 2022 General Assembly in Helsinki. Born in Helsinki, he has been in saunas “since one month old” by his own account. He founded a sauna club at age 14, and pursued sauna research under the influence of Professor Niilo Teeri. He sits on the Finnish Sauna Society's Research and Cultural Committee. He is not the Society's president; the Finnish Sauna Society's chair is Raine Laurikainen.

Elomaa is a purist. He calls electrical sauna stoves “toaster saunas,” prefers traditional Finnish wood-fired smoke saunas, and uses his platform to combat what he describes as misleading claims about infrared products. He is also co-founder of Sauna Aid.

The current board, elected at the October 2022 General Meeting with three additional members added at an extraordinary January 2023 meeting, has 12 members from 10 countries:

Kim Pedersen of Denmark, listed on earlier ISA records and described in the January 2023 Saunaletter as ISA's Chief Communication Officer, does not appear on the current board page. He may hold a non-voting officer role, or have rotated off when the board expanded.

Relationships

ISA's structure is umbrella over national. The four founding nations have each held a member seat continuously since 1977. The 17 currently listed national members include the North American Sauna Society, the British Sauna Society, Norges Badstulaug (Norway), Polski Związek Saunowy (Poland), Svenska Bastuakademien (Sweden), and an additional dozen across Europe, Asia, the Pacific, and Australia.

The closest co-operative relationship is with the Finnish Sauna Society. ISA's registered address sits inside the Society's Vaskiniemi facility. Pirkko Valtakari represented Finland on the Aachen Definition working group in 1999. The presidency has remained in Finnish hands since 1977.

The Deutscher Sauna-Bund hosted the XII International Sauna Congress in Bad Aachen in 1999 (under then-president Eberhard Conradi) and the XVIII Congress in Stuttgart in 2022. It maintains saunaliteratur.de, the research archive Conradi founded in 2009 in collaboration with ISA. Two of ISA's 12 current board members come from the Sauna-Bund.

Two honorary members are named on ISA's public roster: Matti Kivinen, and the photographer and author Mikkel Aaland, whose 1978 book Sweat is the foundational global ethnography of sweat-bathing. Aaland is also an honorary member of the British Sauna Society and serves as president of Sauna Aid.

What it means for you

ISA membership is institutional, not individual. There is no consumer-facing membership tier; ISA members are national associations, supporting industry entities, and a small number of honorary persons. For a sauna owner or buyer, the practical access points are the national associations.

If you are in the United States or Canada, your path into the ISA orbit runs through the North American Sauna Society. NASS holds the North American seat as ISA's national member for the region, runs the Sauna Ambassador Program in partnership with Finlandia Foundation National, and publishes its three-tier membership at $49.50 (individual supporter), $149.50 (sauna dealer), and $149.50 (public sauna). Heated Retreat is a dealer member.

If you are evaluating a sauna purchase, the most directly useful product of ISA's work is the 1999 Aachen Definition. It describes what counts as a sauna by international standard: a wooden room with stepped benches at roughly 80 to 105 degrees Celsius, heated by a stone-filled stove, with infusion-capable löyly. The definition does not deem infrared cabins “saunas” in the technical sense, regardless of how they are marketed. That is not a quality judgment about infrared cabins. It is a definitional one.

If you are interested in supporting humanitarian sauna work, Sauna Aid is the most direct channel. Donations integrate into the XIX Oslo 2026 registration flow and run year-round through sauna-aid.com.