Legacy
Every December since 1978
1978 — today
No permanent staff, no venue of its own, no institutional budget — and not one year missed.
It began as an argument about closing time
In 1978 a Stockholm School of Economics student named Mats Nyqvist decided the Nobel Banquet ended too early. What he organised instead has run every 10 December since, entirely on student labour, and has grown into an established part of Nobel Week.
The timeline below is scaffolded with what we know. Send us the dates, venues and names that belong here and it becomes the real record.
The record
How it became an institution
1978
The first NightCap
An SSE student decides the Banquet should not end at midnight. The first continuation is organised in weeks.
1980s
An annual fixture
The evening settles into 10 December and begins drawing laureates directly from the Banquet.
1990s
Four universities
Stockholm University, KTH, Karolinska Institutet and SSE organise the evening together, taking turns to host one year in four.
2000s
A secret theme
Each host university is rebuilt to a theme kept from guests until the doors open — never repeated from one year to the next.
2010s
1,300 guests
The guest list reaches its present scale of 1,300 invited guests, and the evening sells out every year.
2026
Home to SSE
Hosted by the Stockholm School of Economics, where it was last held in 2022. White tie.
