An intensive Nobel Week is now beginning in Stockholm, with a focus on this year’s Laureates and their contributions to the greatest benefit to mankind. As part of a broad range of public events, the discoveries and achievements of the Laureates can be experienced in the form of virtual reality installations, design, photography and music. Singersongwriter Ane Brun and Cullbergbaletten will, among others, perform at the Nobel Banquet. Chef Tom Sjöstedt will be in charge of the Banquet menu for the first time, together with pastry chef Daniel Roos.

The Nobel Laureates will begin their stay in Stockholm on December 6 with a visit to the Nobel Museum, followed by press conferences and Nobel Lectures at the prize-awarding institutions: the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, the Nobel Assembly at Karolinska Institutet and the Swedish Academy. A number of Laureates will visit schools during the Nobel Week, where just like the teachers and pupils, they will experience inspiring and rewarding encounters.

At the Nobel Prize Concert on December 8, the internationally renowned conductor Gustavo Dudamel, Music Director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, will lead the Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra in a programme comprising Mozart’s Symphony No. 41 “Jupiter” and “Also sprach Zarathustra” by Richard Strauss. Earlier – on December 6 – Dudamel will speak about music as a force for social change, in a programme also featuring a former Laureate at the Nobel Museum.

Music, fashion and photography will portray this year’s Nobel Prizes in the exhibition entitled Nobel Creations, which is being displayed at several Stockholm venues in collaboration between Nobel Center c/o and Beckmans College of Design, the Stockholm School of Photography and the Royal College of Music.

On December 9, seven former Nobel Laureates and some twenty experts will gather at a full-day Nobel Week Dialogue seminar in Gothenburg, Sweden for discussions on the theme “The Future of Truth”. British artist Anish Kapoor will participate in the programme and will unveil his very first virtual reality art work.

For the very first time, two of the year’s Nobel Prizes will also be presented as virtual reality experiences during Nobel Week. At the Nobel Museum, visitors can preview “The Circadian Rhythm”, which visualises the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine awarded to Jeffrey C. Hall, Michael Rosbash and Michael W. Young. It takes viewers on a journey into the cellular level of the human body, explaining how plants, animals and humans adapt their biological rhythm to the Earth’s rotations.

The VR installation “The Day the World Changed” is based on this year’s Peace Prize, which was awarded to the International Committee to Ban Nuclear weapons (ICAN). It places viewers in the ruins of Hiroshima after the 1945 atom bomb explosion and sends them on a journey through the history of nuclear weapons.

At the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony on December 10, the 2017 Laureates will be presented by members of the respective Nobel Committees. The Royal Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra, under the baton of conductor Joana Carneiro, will provide musical interludes during the ceremony. Soloists at the Award Ceremony are Camilla Tilling, soprano, and Joakim Agnas, trumpet.

At the subsequent Nobel Banquet, performers will include musicians Ane Brun, Lena Willemark and Lisa Långbacka, along with Cullbergbaletten (Cullberg Ballet) and the Musica Vitae Chamber Orchestra. The year’s Divertissement in three acts is inspired by Arctic landscapes, ice and the northern lights and has been produced by Lisa Långbacka and Mats Jankell.

Chef Tom Sjöstedt, who operates the Lilla Ego restaurant in Stockholm, has created the starter and main course of the Nobel Banquet for the first time. At his side in the kitchen at Stockholm City Hall will be Daniel Roos, who is in charge of the Banquet dessert for the fourth consecutive year. The menu has been developed since early last spring in close collaboration with the Nobel Foundation’s gastronomic advisors Fredrik Eriksson of Långbro Värdshus, Artistic Leader of Restaurangakademien and Gert Klötzke, Professor of Gastronomy at Umeå University, as well as Gunnar Eriksson, Chef de Cuisine at Stadshusrestauranger (City Hall Restaurants).

The Nobel Week will end on December 12 with seminars at Karolinska Institutet and the Stockholm School of Economics, school visits organised by the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences, a visit to the Swedish Riksdag (Parliament), a celebration of the Laureate in Literature at the Royal Dramatic Theatre and a reception at the Nobel Foundation. On the following days, several Laureates will visit universities around Sweden before they travel home.