Brain Bar entered 2026 with a new CEO and a reworked strategy: Bujdosó‑Nagy Bianka took over the executive role in 2026. The festival, now in its twelfth year, continues to prioritise engagement with young people and educators, but aims to extend that relationship beyond the two days of the event into year‑round programmes and touchpoints.
Bujdosó‑Nagy told Portfolio that her prior external work with the Brain Bar team helped her quickly understand the festival’s aims. Her first major task was a strategic review of the 12‑year‑old brand: clarifying the main target groups, defining subgroups, and adapting offerings to better meet their needs.
Tribe, Teacher Club and the new pedagogue award
The previously operating student‑ambassador programme, Tribe, has been relaunched and expanded with mid‑year events, workshops, talks and closed‑door conversations. They also launched the Tribe Teacher Club, which currently works with 18 teachers. Participants form a diverse group — from Újfehértó to the Felvidék region, including representatives of Budapest School — and bring varied methodological backgrounds.
Together with members of the Teacher Club, Brain Bar created a pedagogue award that will be presented for the first time this year on the festival’s closing day. The award intends to highlight and recognise unique teaching initiatives and methodologies that can serve as examples for society at large.
Research methods: surveys and focus groups centring young people’s concerns
Topic selection at Brain Bar is based on research. While they previously relied mainly on questionnaires, 2026 saw the introduction of focus‑group research, and the organisers plan further focus groups in the autumn after the festival. The research examines issues that matter to young people: their fears, future‑related anxieties, aspirations and the conditions they see as necessary to make those aspirations real.
Organisers note that participants do not necessarily want ready‑made answers; rather, they seek new impulses and perspectives that prompt thinking and discussion. The festival’s interactive formats are designed to provide those opportunities.
2026’s theme: communities, loneliness and the “1+1=3” motto
This year’s central theme was the role of communities, summed up by the motto “1+1=3,” which the team uses to express that a functioning community can be more than the sum of its members. Research highlighted that one of young people’s biggest fears is loneliness; in response, Brain Bar organised a mid‑year Night Vibes event that sold out.
The programming aimed both to address loneliness itself and to explore how communities affect people and why offline connections — including in‑person festival experiences — remain important.
Anxiety and agency in Generation Z
According to Brain Bar organisers, many young people experience anxiety and there has not been a marked improvement in its prevalence, but alongside anxiety there is a strong will to act in Generation Z. Rather than being paralysed, many young people want to understand what they can do, what room for manoeuvre they have, and how they can influence their future.
Another theme is the perception that previous generations did not act sufficiently on certain issues. Young people therefore want to see multiple future scenarios and discuss which directions might be viable for them — a development organisers view positively, and one that has made audiences increasingly interactive both during the festival and at bi‑monthly events.
Technology and AI through the lens of everyday impact
When Brain Bar discusses AI, it does not limit the conversation to technical developments; it foregrounds questions about everyday impact: how to choose a career in the AI era, what to study, and which skills will become particularly important. Topics are addressed from multiple angles — sometimes at a higher, systemic level, and other times by focusing on practical, day‑to‑day effects, for example on education or healthcare.
Business model: long‑term partners and B2B sales
Brain Bar’s business model rests on multiple pillars. Each year many large companies partner with the festival because its audience — especially university and high school students — is a valuable demographic. The organisation aims for year‑long partnerships rather than one‑off festival sponsorships, connecting companies to programmes such as the student‑ambassador initiative and teacher professional development.
B2B ticket sales are also significant: many companies buy tickets for employees as motivation or incentive, creating additional networking opportunities on site. The organisers emphasise the importance of partners engaging authentically and creating real value for young people.
Preparing for the future: the central question
Bujdosó‑Nagy believes the central question for coming years is how we will live together in the future. This includes how communities and family structures will evolve, whether institutions such as marriage will change in value, how the economy and advancing AI will affect social life, and where people will live — for example concerns about housing and potential housing crises that could change living conditions. Climate change and its local effects were also highlighted as an everyday reality in Hungary.
Finally, she underlined the importance of clarifying what constitutes real knowledge today: what cannot be taken away from us, what makes us more than machines, and which skills will be newly valued in the future.
Collaboration and acknowledgements
Portfolio is Brain Bar’s media partner. The production of the article was supported by Alrite, a Hungarian‑language online dictation and video subtitling application.
