Fullhouse at Europe’s Biggest Festival on the Future

Unadulterated festival vibe and constant buzz. At Brain Bar 2022 the biggest geniuses of our days from more than 20 countries and breathtaking artistic performances took turns on the stage. No questions were forbidden, you could even argue with the speakers if you didn’t agree.

We’ve put the focus on the world's most burning issues, and we have not shied away from divisive topics. For the first time, the Hungarian audience heardliveMalcolm Gladwell, the six-time New York Times bestselling author, who spoke about the challenges of the next decades and how Generation Z can only tackle them by building a society of team players. And the popular former British Ambassador, Iain Lindsay asked Balázs Orbán, the Prime Minister's Political Director, about the leaders needed to fight the battles of the future.

Laura Toodu, the Estonian government's defence policy adviser, relentlessly confronted us with the reality of conscription, which could easily become our own future. The taboo-busting continued with Joanna Williams, author of the scandalous book "Women VS Feminism", defending women against modern feminism and stressing that everyone is harmed by the overheated fight between men and women. Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former "rock star" finance minister, took on blockchain developer Viktor Tábori in a debate to crush the Bitcoin revolution and with it the utopia of "non-political money". 

ZingTjseng, Editor-in-Chief of VICE UK, and JakubOlek, Director of Government Relations atTikTok, answeredquestionsonstageaboutthecultural and politicalresponsibility of their platforms. DeannaMarsigliese, ArtisticDirector of Pixar, spokeaboutthetrendsshapingtheanimatedfilms of thefuture and Hollywood'sresponsibilitytoshapeourworldview. 

The entirefestivalaudienceattendedthelaunch of Gergely Böszörményi-Nagy'sbook NONKONFORM. The founder of Brain Bar has collectedworksbyauthorswhoarenotafraidto confront falsemyths and popularclichés, what he callstheconformismthat is paralysingourgeneration. 

Over the two days of Brain Bar, the stage was graced by the head of LEGO's creative lab, LEGO Ideas; the founder of SEON, the fastest growing start-up in Hungary; and a data scientist who is also a circus acrobat.