SlowUp Bike Events in Switzerland

All around Switzerland, you’ll find SlowUp events, where roads are closed to car traffic and bikes take over. They close 30+km of roads for the whole day, usually on Sunday and mark off a pre-defined course for bike traffic.

Along the way, there are stations with food and activities, with lots of sponsors doing free giveaways and contests. It’s not a race, more like a festival, just for fun, free to participate.

Here’s some info and tips from our recent experience at SlowUp Ticino.

See more activities in the Ticino region

What to expect at SlowUp

There are SlowUp events year from mid-April through September. There are 19 SlowUp events in Switzerland planned for 2026. You can see the program here. 

A few things I noticed on our first time:

• This isn’t just for bikes. We also saw people on roller skates, kids on scooters, wheelchairs, lots of strollers, running groups and casual walkers.
• There is a preferred direction of traffic, in our case, clockwise around the loop. This prevents opposite directions running into each other.
• You don’t need a map. The route has lots of arrows pointing in the correct direction. There are staff members at junction points. You cannot get lost.
• You don’t have to do the whole loop as there are many places to cut across to the other side of the loop. In this case, it would be helpful to have a printed map of the route so you can find the best place to cross.
• Bring a bag or basket to collect all the freebies you gather along the way.

Renting bikes for SlowUp

If you don’t have a bike, no worries. It’s easy to rent bikes in Switzerland through the Rent-a-Bike website. They work with bike shops at train stations all over Switzerland. On the website you can see what types of bike equipment a specific shop carries and reserve it. If you are renting for the SlowUp event, probably best to reserve early as hundreds of people come to these events and the shop might sell out.

See also my post: How to Rent Bikes in Switzerland

In Bellinzona, we got our bikes at BikePort at the Bellinzona train station, open every day 9:00-12:00 and 14:00-18:00. Their staff was so friendly and helpful and spoke perfect English. They have lots of bike options, including kid bikes, child bike seats, bike trailers for children, etc. We loved that they had optional baskets for the bikes, so we didn’t have to carry all our stuff in our backpacks.

SlowUp Ticino Bike Route

In April 2019, we did SlowUp Ticino , which had a 50km loop from Bellinzona to Locarno, following this route (click to see larger). The red dots mark activity stations along the route. We only did about half the route, looping back at Gudo, riding about 16km. We spent so much time at the activity stations that we didn’t have time to do the full loop.

This route was roughly similar to the two official bicycle routes that run this valley, which you can ride anytime along with the car traffic.

Route 31 – Percorso Valle Maggia. This bike route is 22 km (shown below), rated easy with minimal elevation gain. It is particularly recommended for children. This is also route 88 Magadino Skate.

Route 311 – Percorso Pedemontano. This bike route is also 22 km, staying closer to the hills on the south side of the valley.

Our Experience at SlowUp Ticino

SlowUp was a fun way to see the countryside and explore the little neighborhoods. Sometimes we were riding through farm fields with uninterrupted views of the mountains, sometimes we were on narrow lanes in quiet neighborhoods, sometimes on normally busy shopping streets and industrial areas – you see it all. We loved feeling like part of the community and getting carried along the river of happy cyclists.

Now for a few scenes from our day to see what it’s like. Some of the ride was through pretty scenes like this.

Lots of activities along the way. At this station, there was a bike obstacle course with see-saws and wood pieces you had to ride over. Lots of the kids were falling over on this one.

Lots of sponsors with amusements, games, giveaways and contests. On the right, you had to catch the red balls in the wind box and put them in the right order to win a prize.

Bike safety promotions at this booth and free balloons that people attached to their bikes.

Lots of more pretty stuff.

What do you think? Will you join the next SlowUp?

See our other Bellinzona posts and all our Ticino posts.

See our other Biking in Switzerland posts.