Events: What's on in Budapest

For four days this September, the terraces of Buda Castle will once again showcase the very best of Hungarian wine culture. At the 35th annual Budapest Wine Festival, hundreds of Hungarian and international labels, sparkling wines, premium gastronomic offerings, guided tastings and concerts will be presented against the backdrop of the most spectacular panorama in Budapest.

The guest of honour this year is the Americas. On the Savoy Terrace, you can become familiar with the wines of the United States, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile and Brazil. Free pop-up tastings and industry events await by day, and the Kvaterka discussion series then continues in the evenings. The musical agenda will include shows by ManGoRise, The Bits, Messessippi and Dynamite Dudes, after which DJs take the spotlight.

Tickets are available here. One new feature this year is the Explorer ticket, which allows you to enter half-price if you arrive by 5pm.

More than 100 restored works return to Budapest's big screens as part of the six-day Budapest Classics Film Marathon, their picture and sound quality being appreciated in Hungary for the first time. Works in Hungarian run with English subtitles, English-language ones with Hungarian, and both are used for features in Polish, Czech, German and other world languages.

The festival will kick off with a world premiere on September 15 at Uránia, where the fully restored 4K version of Queen Budapest, which captures the band's 1986 concert in Budapest, will be screened. The schedule ranges from popular cult films to rarities from film history. In addition to Amélie, Thelma and Louise, La Haine, Ashes and Diamonds, and The Pianist, the original version of The Miracle Worker, filmed with Ferenc Puskás, will also be shown. David Bowie appears in the vampire film Hunger, and separate selections deal with the work of Andrzej Wajda and Mathieu Kassovitz, the 1956 revolution, and the surprising connections between Western and Hungarian history.

The Marathon doesn't end with the credits: the screenings are also accompanied by concerts, 14 restoration premieres, master classes, discussions, an exhibition, outdoor performances and parties at the one of the five main cinemas involved, the Toldi. Tickets are generally Ft 1,500/€4.15, admission to Queen Budapest Ft 4,900/€13.60.

Three years after hosting the World Athletics Championship in the National Athletics Centre newly built for the occasion, Budapest hosts this major meet of top world stars. Over a three-day weekend, from September 11-13, Olympic heroes such as floppy-haired pole vaulter Mondo Duplantis, long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall and hurdler Grant Holloway, all gold medallists in Paris in 2024, will be competing. One- and three-day tickets are still on sale here.

Those into craft beer shouldn't pass up the opportunity to sample 300 brews of every kind, produced by indepedent brewers from around Hungary and the region. Over four days at prominent music venue Dürer Kert, ales, lagers, pilsners and more will be poured into branded glasses and available at various outlets. Street food and live music complement the liquid merriment.

What does abstract painting taste like? On September 16, the revived Art Corner by Apollo Gallery at Time Out Market Budapest will seek the answer to this question, where the contemporary works of Gyula Sági will appear not only on the walls but also in cocktail form.

This joint initiative has already opened a gateway between the gallery and the gastronomic space of the Corvin Palace, both sharing the same building. Works related to Apollo’s exhibitions have been displayed in the Market’s Vault room while the Spirit Bar tailored drinks to the visual world of the creators. From September 16, the Art Corner continues in a renewed format, giving even greater attention to the presented artists and their work.

The spotlight first falls on Gyula Sági, a Hungarian artist living and working in Berlin. In his large-scale works on paper, he builds meticulous visual systems with ink, pencil and ballpoint pen: his geometric structures are shaped by the rhythm of repetition, the patterns of nature and the small irregularities that slip in during the creation process. The event is also a milestone for the Apollo Gallery, as Sági is the first artist with whom they have a long working relationship.

The Mint to Bee cocktail drink (Ft 1,950/€5.40) prepared for the evening is based on matcha, combined with honey and mint. The name conjures up the world of beekeeping, while the green, yellow, gold and blue colour bands painted on a tall glass, layered upon layer, evoke the visual world of one of Sági’s exhibited works, and are also reflected in the drink.

This public event begins with a short welcome and a conversation with the artist, who is then happy to talk about his work informally over a cocktail.

This year's free concert by the Budapest Festival Orchestra in Heroes’ Square opens with Schubert’s 'Unfinished' Symphony No.8 in B minor, followed by the orchestra’s newly formed children’s choir performing for the first time. The young singers will sing Arvo Pärt’s Summer Waltz in its original Estonian, and the evening will close with excerpts from Prokofiev’s Cinderella Suite. The concert, designed for families and the youngest music lovers, is free and open to the public without registration. Paper chairs will be provided on site, which can be taken home as a souvenir after the performance.

Kicking off with the lilting reggae rhythms of Irie Maffia on April 23, prime open-air live venue Budapest Park stages five months of regular shows in the shadow of Közvágóhíd, set back from the Müpa arts complex in south Pest. Among the top international acts are Moby on August 1, Rita Ora on July 29, Idles on July 8 and the Sex Pistols with Frank Carter on July 20. Big Hungarian names include Halott Pénz, Ivan & the Parazol and Blahalouisiana. The season closes with Parov Stelar on September 26.

Cha-Cha-Cha, Süss Fel Nap, West-Balkán, Kultiplex, Zöld Pardon – the alternative nightspots of Budapest in the early 2000s unfolded in metro underpasses, courtyard gardens and former cinemas. All have completely disappeared or been converted into something less pioneering.

This free pop-up exhibition at the House of Hungarian Music picks out visual memories of this era. Flashes, grainy digital images, faces caught on the dance floor and familiar clubs appear in the photos of Balázs Glódi and Fényérközék, as well as in footage from the archives of Pulzar and drumandbass.hu.

The exhibition not only evokes nostalgia, but also shows a moment before a big change, the period when, for the first time, digital cameras and party photo sites made it possible to look back on the nightlife of an entire city almost instantly. The exhibition is a companion event to the Independent Label Fair taking place in September. Note also that the House of Hungarian Music closes between August 10-17.

A new exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts not only displays fascinating objects from Ancient Egypt, but also shows how statues, stelae, reliefs and wall paintings were made. Viewers are allowed into the creative process – through unfinished works, contemporary depictions and details that preserve traces of the making, you can see how the Egyptian masters did it.

One of the most exciting parts of the exhibition is that it brings items thousands of years old to new life with the help of modern technology. You can see a 3D animation of the internal structure of a coffin, reconstructed colours that are no longer perceptible to the naked eye, and a hologram projector that shows how the works of art might have been in their original splendour.

In June, the open-air stage on Budapest's largest island comes alive again when one of Budapest’s most beautiful summer-only venues kicks off its annual agenda of classical music, opera, spectacular productions and Hungarian pop idols.

The season begins on June 4 with the opening concert of the National Philharmonic Orchestra, followed by the Queen Symphony & Concert Show on June 13, and Carl Orff's Carmina Burana on June 17, which will be performed in a concert-like, oratorio format, with a symphony orchestra and choir.

The Danube Carnival gala will be held on June 19, followed by two nights of Verdi on July 23 and 25, and the revered pre-war Hungarian cabaret swing of Budapest Bár on September 2. Although the programme is aimed towards a domestic audience, the verdant setting under the stars more than makes up for any linguistic hurdles. See here for the full schedule in English.

On the Hungarian throne for 40 years, from 1342 to 1382, King Louis I the Great, oversaw the excavation of precious metals, mainly gold, to allow his medieval realm to flourish. Born exactly 700 years ago in Visegrád, where a number of anniversary events will also take place, this ruler of the Angevin dynasty pursued a successful foreign policy and quelled internal rebellion, acquiring the Polish crown, founding Hungary's first university, and encouraging the development of arts and craftsmanship. The few remaining examples of coins and jewellery from this golden period are on display at the National Museum will be on display until the end of the year. Documentation is in English and Hungarian.

This year, RAKPART, the traffic-free celebration of the Pest embankment, opens for its summer season on May 1 at the start of the bank-holiday weekend. Entertainment will be laid on for pedestrians, cyclists, badminton players, barbecuers, joggers, rollerbladers, dog walkers and anyone keen on relaxing and taking in the cityscape by the river. Until mid-September, the waterfront will be free of motorists every weekend and, for 2026, the lower embankment will also be closed to four wheels on weekday evenings.