Our weekly roundup for the upcoming weekend offers plenty of suggestions for where to go, what to do, and who must not be missed during the next three days. There are always so many happenings to choose from in Budapest – exhibitions, parties, live music, festivals, and more – but here is our pick of the bunch for the imminent 72 hours or so:
Friday
CAFe Budapest at various venues – events are happening all day
The city’s annual cross-disciplinary arts festival, CAFe Budapest, is happening between October 6th and 22nd. This event highlights cutting-edge culture with any number of aesthetic attractions, from music concerts in various genres to contemporary circus shows, as well as visual art exhibitions, opera and theater, dance performances, and photography. More details and full program
Design Week Budapest at various venues – events are happening all day
Budapest’s Design Week kicks off on Friday, showcasing Magyar-made fashion and furniture, artworks and much more, until October 15th. In what is the biggest design festival of the autumn, more than 120 events, workshops, exhibitions, film screenings, and all kinds of creative get-togethers, will bring crowds of art enthusiasts to various citywide venues, including major museums and hidden ateliers. More details and full program
12pm - 11:59pm: Budapest Ritmo at Akvárium Klub
Budapest Ritmo is a festival of new connections, encounters and discoveries organized by Hangvető and CAFe Budapest. During the festival, musicians from more than 20 countries tread the boards at Budapest’s beloved downtown club over the course of three days. More details and full program
7pm - 8:30pm: Hitler and Hitler English-language performance at Fuga
Hitler and Hitler is a surrealistic farce; it is not a classical biographical performance, but rather a collage of artistic reflections on the book Mein Kampf, filled with rich imagination and vivid fantasy. Berlin- and Budapest-based actors created Hitler and Hitler, a performance that gives insight into different perspectives, and creates a new yet painfully recognizable portrait of the paranoid dictator.
7:30pm - 10pm: Tan Dun and Concerto Budapest at the Palace of Arts
Chinese-American Oscar-winning contemporary classical composerTan Dun fills Müpa with memorable melodies on Friday. Tan Dun’s original style synthesizes traditional Eastern music with American and European avant-garde, and he often performs his operas at the world’s leading opera houses and concert halls. Hundreds of millions around the world listened to the piece he composed for the awards ceremonies at the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, played over 300 times.
Saturday
10am - 6pm: Sütnicake Cake Festival at Gellért Hotel
Over the weekend, one of Budapest’s most famous historic hotels, the Gellért, fills with mouthwatering aromas as the country’s most talented confectioners gather to showcase their cakes, cupcakes, chocolates, and other sweet seductions. The topic at this year’s festival focuses on women and films. A separate section offers diet-friendly treats for those with particular requirements.
11am - 7pm: Capa in Israel exhibition at the Capa Center
Hungarian photographer Endre Friedmann, better-known as Robert Capa, is often considered to be the world’s greatest war photographer. Between 1948 and 1950, Capa captured the reality of the first years of the newly founded Jewish state in Israel, a time of joy, uncertainty, pain, and optimism at the same time. A selection of these moving photographs are on view at the Capa Center’s new exhibition between October 7th and November 26th.
12pm - 5:30pm: Tweed Run Budapest on Egyetem Square (outside Starbucks)
Cigars in jacket pockets, hats on heads, extravagant hair, and perfect pearls: don your best vintage outfit and let yourself be lured back into the lavish, decadent, and wild world of the Roaring Twenties while cycling through the city with other flappers and gangsters. During the Tweed Run, participants cycle through the city dressed in the costumes of the day, stopping for a picnic, small talk, photo session or a dance flash mob. The meeting point is outside Starbucks on Egyetem Square, and the event will be concluded at Dürer Kert, where a vintage party and the award ceremony of the costume contest await everyone.
10pm - 4am: Soundtrack party at Mika Tivadar Mulató
When it comes to soundtracks, the main theme of iconic films like Pulp Fiction and TheBlues Brothers start playing in our ears straight away. On Saturday French DJ Lapidem fills Mika Tivadar Mulató with the best movie music.
8:30pm - 10:45pm: Se7en at the Bem Cinema
Watch this classic American neo-noir crime film once again with original English audio and Hungarian subtitles at the Bem Cinema on Saturday. In Se7en, soon-to-be-retiring detective William Somerset (Morgan Freeman) is partnered with a young hotshot, David Mills (Brad Pitt), to track down a cruel criminal who chose the seven deadly sins as his modus operandi to carry out a series of gruesome murders...
Sunday
9am - 2pm: Szimpla Farmers’ Market at Szimpla
One of the most popular ruin pubs in Budapest – Szimpla on chaotic Kazinczy Street – fills up every Sunday with a friendly artisanal farmers’ market, where you can buy locally made goods and fresh produce such as fruits, cheeses, vegetables, honeys, jams, mushrooms, cold cuts, and homemade lemonades and syrups.
5pm - : Digital Stories x smART! Interactive Installation at Trafó
EJTECH is an experimental art and technology lab based in Budapest, founded by Esteban de la Torre and Judit Eszter Kárpáti. They explore Human-Computer-Interaction via alternative interfaces, e-textiles, new materials and interactive installations, while focusing their artistic research on the overlapping dimensions between sound and textiles.
8pm - : Hans Zimmer Live in Prague 2016 at the Corvin Cinema
Long story short, Hans Zimmer is the number-one guy who makes us cry once the closing credits appear at the end of a film and one of his masterfully captivating compositions slowly and gently starts to play, breaking that lump in our throat that had been building up during the whole movie. The German film-score composer has written soul-stirring songs for over 150 motion pictures by now, some of which he performed at his powerful concert in Prague last year that will be screened with original audio on Sunday at the Corvin Cinema.
8pm - : Mezzoforte (ISL) - 40 years anniversary tour, Mystical Plants at A38
Iceland’s instrumental jazz-funk fusion band celebrates the 40th anniversary of its existence this year. Mezzoforte, a name now synonymous with danceable, easy, funky jazz, throws a memorable jazz jamboree aboard A38 on Sunday that encompasses their entire career, and will be supported by a Hungarian band, Mystical Plants.
