Brain Bar Brain Bar | 18-19 September 2025

Presenting Brain Bar, Europe’s largest annual festival on the future, where you are offered an extraordinary platform to delve into the most pressing issues of the 21st century together with the greatest minds of the Earth including scientists, politicians, entrepreneurs, and cultural icons. It’s an event where your voice matters: all the sessions are designed for you to ask your most thought-provoking questions and share your thoughts and ideas directly with the speakers. Since its inception in 2015, Brain Bar has hosted an array of global luminaries, from PayPal Founder Peter Thiel to Ben Lamm, the man who revived the dire wolf - and in 2026, we are back with similarly great minds.

The 2026 Brain Bar takes place on 17-18September 2025. Our venue this year is the House of Music Hungary, the address of which is: Olof Palme stny 3., Budapest 1146, Hungary.

As to the agenda, you can anticipate 100+ captivating discussions, talks, music, and art shows across our five stages, alongside useful workshops held in the Talent Hub. Also, get ready for the most mind-blowing conversations and to have your voice heard: we are specifically designing every session for you to have the chance to ask questions and share your views with fellow visitors or speakers. Other than exciting stage sessions, an eclectic bunch of activities and games await!

At the festival,  you'll meet...

• MIT Media Lab's legendary brain-computer interface expert Nataliya Kosmyna
• Mathematician and author David Bessis
• and former social media manager for Ryanair and Duolingo Lily Rafferty

...and the list keeps updating!

You can now buy your super early day 2-day pass to enter all programs on all stages. Don't forget: you’ll get a 25% discount when buying 4 passes at once.

If you’re a student or a teacher, you may attend Brain Bar for free. All you have to do is fill out the survey below to sign up for a pass, and we’ll let you know if you’ve made it to Brain Bar for free within a month. If you take the questionnaire seriously and answer all the questions conscientiously, you've got nothing to worry about. However, if you haven't answered all questions attentively, we may decide you are not eligible for a free pass. In this case, you're more than welcome in the open outside area of the festival without a pass.

You can also sign up an entire high school classes for free entry. If you wish to do so, there's no need to fill out the above student and teacher registration form separately. As an educator, all you need to do is contact us at students@brainbar.com and we'll soon get in touch with you regarding the next steps. If you're a student, we kindly ask you to talk to one of your teachers and request them to get in touch with us.

With a little care when filling out the registration form, most probably all of them. We’ll let you know about this a few days after you sign up.

At the Brain Bar festival, the sessions are in English or Hungarian. The language will always be indicated in the agenda on all our platforms. It is great if visitors to the festival are able to speak English fluently, even if not perfectly, and can understand advanced conversations about important issues in our world. This will allow them to hear the thoughts of the greatest international speakers and to comment on the talks - not to forget that the questionnaire for students and secondary school classes to participate is also in English.

Absolutely! At our partners’ booths, other than exciting programs and activities, you can inquire about open positions. We collect these positions on our page Talent Market, where you can check them out and apply for them. The page opens 2 months before the festival and will remain active for 1 month after it.