Spring 2025 Events in Budapest: Easter Markets, Music Festivals, Food & Exhibitions

Hungarian parliament building and Danube river in spring, Budapest, Hungary

Best Things to do in Budapest Spring 2025

Spring often arrives early in Budapest compared to neighboring capitals, making it one of the best times to visit the Hungarian capital. Kicking off in early March, the crowds begin to throng the city’s avenues in search of sunshine and inspiration from all the city’s great cultural offerings. At Insight Cities we’ve sifted through the events calendar and have put together our top spring 2025 things to do if your heading towards Budapest.

A tour guide standing next to a statue with a small group of people listening intently in Budapest, Hungary

Take a tour with Insight Cities

If you’re visiting Budapest for the first time this spring, introduce yourself to the city and its history with our Downtown Pest and Buda Castle tours. Our Downtown Pest tour takes you around all the main sites on the Pest side of the river, including the Parliament building and Liberty Square, while our Buda Castle tour explores the magnificent complex on the other side of the river, offering a closer look at the city’s imperial history. Our guides are Budapest stories and complexities with impressive depth and love to share their knowledge with travelers in acompelling and personable way. Things get busy as the spring season warms up, so book your tour today or contact us at info@insightcities.com.

Easter in Budapest

Carved goose eggs for sale in the retail display of a gift shop in Budapest. — Easter eggs in Budapest

Easter is serious business in Budapest, with storefronts and market stalls decking themselves in colorful ribbons and painted eggs. You’ll find classic Easter symbols of colored eggs, rabbits, and flowers, as well as a selection of uniquely Hungarian Easter treats: boiled eggs, lángos (fried bread sprinkled with cheese), gulyás (meat stew spiced with paprika) and kalács, a sweet braided bread. A favorite sweet is túró rudi, a sweet curd cheese bar covered in chocolate, that you might find for sale at some market stalls.

Keep reading for our favorite Easter markets, and other recommended Easter events in Budapest.

Easter Market at Vorosmarty Ter – April TBA until April 21, 2025

Just as at Christmas time, the city’s main square turns into a giant showcase of culture, tradition, baked goods, handicrafts, full of the Hungarian capital’s high spirits, for three weeks around Easter. Don’t miss out on this chance to pick up some authentic souvenirs, toys and our favorite Hungarian street food, lángos. Perfect for some family fun!

Gozsdu Weekend Market – Open Sundays from 10 AM to 7 PM

Gozsdu Weekend Market offers an alternative to the typical Easter markets in the main squares. This art and design-focused market is all about artisanal, handcrafted curios, paintings, jewelry, clothes, and even food. Set in the enchanting Gozsdu Courtyard, in the heart of Pest’s reinvigorated Jewish Quarter, the self-styled “Portobello of Budapest” runs a special festive market in the lead-up to Easter, with seasonal decorations, crafts and treats.

Men and women in traditional clothing in the Hungarian village of Holloko, with one man holding a bucket of water and a woman soaking wet — Traditional celebrations at © Hollókő Easter Festival

Hollókő Easter Festival – April 18 to 21, 2025

If you have time for a day trip outside of Budapest in Easter 2025, take a journey to Hollókő, 100 kilometers to the northeast, for a true Hungarian Easter experience. Traditional music, foods, ceremonies and folk dances, with many revelers in traditional clothing, all in the charming setting of a historical village, conjure an Easter atmosphere that transcends time.

Hungary observes Good Friday and Easter Monday (April 18 and 21 in 2025), so many shops and restaurants will be closed. Make sure to plan your trip accordingly if you’re going to visit Budapest this spring.

Crowds gather to watch the local dancers perform during the annual Holloko Easter Festival in northern Hungary. — Hollókő Easter Festival

Music

Szentendre Spring Festival – March 14 to 30th, 2025

The Baroque town of Szentendre is known for its marvelous array of art museums and is just north of Budapest. Upon the arrival of spring, Szentendre comes alive with concerts, theatre, literary and art events. Organized since 1986, the Szentendre Spring festival serves to promote the vibrant local arts scene in a town that – while close to the capital – still nurtures its own unique identity.

If you’d like to explore more of Szentendre beyond the festival, we can customize a day trip for you. Whether you want to experience the local art scene, visit wineries, or just taste a sample of local specialties, we can organize the perfect trip. Contact us and we’ll start crafting your trip to Budapest and Szentendre right away!

Bartók Spring International Arts Festival – various venues, April 4–13, 2025

Named for one of Hungary’s most beloved composers, the Bartók Spring International Arts festival goes beyond the work of one man and celebrates musical culture both locally and internationally. The year 2025 marks the fifth edition of the festival, where local favorites Diana Damrau and Jonas Kaufmann will appear in concert together. Other top acts include the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, which will play Bach, and the Corvinus-Közgáz Folk Dance Ensemble, who along with the Forte Company will perform movements of Bartók’s Mikrokosmos.

Jazz Spring at MUPA Budapest – May 9 to 11, 2025

Budapest is also a center for more contemporary musical movements, celebrated each year as part of the Jazz Spring. The festival features not just jazz musicians but also R&B, soul, and hip-hop artists. The 2025 edition features trumpeter and Prince collaborator Philip Lassiter headlining on May 9.

Art

Budapest Photo Festival – Dates TBA 2025 (likely April)

If you are more fascinated with visual arts, the Budapest Photo Festival is a city-wide collection of photographic treats that runs through the spring. Set up to showcase the best of local talent and import inspiration from abroad, the Budapest Photo Festival fosters the art of photography. The theme of 2025 is spot on for the times: Real and Artificial Identities, exploring the implications of artificial intelligence in photography.

A full house in a cinema in Budapest, Hungary - inside an auditorium with people in every seat — Audience at ©Friss Hús Budapest

Friss Hús Budapest International Short Film Festival – May 29 to June 4, 2025

With a focus on fresh talent, this film festival aims to bring budding filmmakers and audiences – from passing fans to industry professionals – together. Thousands pack audiences and attend on-line. As the only film festival in Hungary with an actual pitching forum, Friss Hús has earned its spot as Hungary’s top short film festival.

Exhibitions

Black-and-white print of the painting "Condemned Cell' by Mihaly Munkacsy, with a man sitting at a table looking resigned while other people stand around him, upset in various ways — Black-and-white print of the painting “Condemned Cell’ by Mihaly Munkacsy, 1870, Public domain

Munkácsy – Story of a worldwide sensation at the Museum of Fine Arts Budapest – closes March 30, 2025

Commemorating Mihály Munkácsy’s 180th birthday, this exhibition is one of the largest on the Hungarian painter’s work and life ever put up, featuring more than 100 works of art, archival photographs, documents, and cult objects. His most famous works will be presented from a new perspective, as well as his lesser-known pieces and those exbited for the very first time which reveal the development of a rare artist who achieved fame in his lifetime and who enjoys a cult following even today. Exhibited works include Christ Before Pilate and The Condemned Cell.

The Painter and the Museum: József Nemes Lampérth at the Hungarian National Gallery – closes March 30, 2025

Opened in 2024 to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the artist’s death, this exhibition presents the work of an early pioneer of the Hungarian avant garde. Though József Nemes Lampérth died at the young age of 33 and thus left behind a limited collection of works, his work had an outsize influence on the avant garde art scene that stretched far beyond his lifetime. Among the 32 works exhibited include his early work The Catafalque, painted after his father’s death in 1912, and masterpieces Standing Female Nude from the Back, and On the Slopes of Gellért Hill.

Shine! Time for Jewellery at the Hungarian National Museum – until April 13, 2025

Jewelry has featured in human society for millennia, and this exhibition explores the ways that people have adorned themselves with metal, gemstones and other materials in different times and places. Among the pieces on display include some of the earliest gold jewelry from the Carpathian Basin, a nationally unique silver brooch depicting a human face, several medieval gold clothing pins and ornaments decorated with precious stones, and an 18th century gold reliquary cross.

Food and Drink

Two people with sunglasses holding wine glasses smiling at the camera, with people milling about looking at vendors, green leafy trees, and blue sky in he background — © Gourmet Festival

Gourmet Festival – May 23 to 25, 2025

The Gourmet Festival takes place in Buda’s Millenaris Park in the middle of May and brings, quite literally to your table, a chance to see some of the hottest chefs in the world in action. You’ll find world-class chefs preparing unique and delicious dishes you can hardly find anywhere else in the city. While we await to find out who will attend 2025’s festival, 2024’s was all about women, featuring some of Hungary’s top female chefs. We suggest getting the festival pass and making multiple visits if you have the time. Perfect for families and foodies alike.

Budapest Beer Week – May 26 to June 1, 2025

This international beer festival celebrates all things beer, with weekend tasting sessions, tap takeovers, concerts and DJ afterparties. Select bars and local breweries host, with tastings of beers from neighboring nations on tap.

Design

a white spiral staircase with black metal railings in Budapest, Hungary — Former Haggenmacher Tenement Building 3 (aka Haggenmacher Palace 3.) Photo by Globetrotter19, Wikimedia Commons

Budapest 100 – May 2025, exact dates TBA

An annual celebration of people and 100-year old edifices in the city, held each spring, Budapest 100 ticks all the right boxes for the history nerds in us. Spend the first weekend of May exploring hitherto unknown buildings that are rarely (if ever) open to the public as well as some known ones across Buda and Pest. While we wait for the announcement of this year’s focus, last year put the spotlight on houses built in the 1970s.

Theater

A choir singing on stage with a woman in a white dress in the top row, al bathed in yellow light — © Péter Rákossy, courtesy of the Hungarian State Opera

Carmina Burana at the Hungarian State Opera — various dates, March to May 2025

The result of a collaboration between several Hungarian musical and visual artists, this production presents the full opera of Carl Orff’s Carmina opera in an exciting new way, combining high-tech visual arts with classical music and dance. In addition to dancers from the National Ballet, singers from the Hungarian Opera, and the chorus, this production of Carmina Burana features magical 3D projections for a spectacular experience.

Mario and the Magician & Bluebeard’s Castle at the Hungarian State Opera – April 3 to 13, 2025

This opera double feature spotlights two of Hungary’s greatest operas by two great Hungarians. Mario and the Magician, based on the novel by Thomas Mann and composed by Béla Balázs, explores the hypnotizing effects a visiting magician has on the residents of an Italian resort town. Bluebeard’s Castle, Béla Bartók’s only opera, takes inspiration from the Bluebeard fairy tale, where a new bride explores the forbidden halls of her husband’s castle.

Special Events

Dancing fountains in Liberty Square, Budapest, Hungary, on a warm sunny spring day — Budapest Liberty square fountain

Revolution Day – March 15, 2025

This public holiday in Hungary commemorates the Revolution of 1848, which reverberated throughout Europe but also has special significance to Hungarians, as the revolution that took place in their locality led to a war of Independence from Habsburg Rule. The Parliament building will be open to the public to view the Holy Crown of Hungary, and special events take place all across the city. Among the festivities are a procession of Hussars along the main city streets, historical reenactments, and official ceremonies. St. Stephen’s Hall at Buda Castle is also open free to the public.

Want to learn more about the history of Hungary? On Insight Cities Budapest private tours and small-group tours, we explore the many faces of Hungary’s capital, from the city’s profound Jewish heritage, fabulous Art Nouveau architecture, grand cafés, and complex Cold War legacy, to the Ruin Bars and UNESCO-cited design scene that infuse Budapest today with new cosmopolitanism and creativity. Or contact us to arrange a custom tour. Our guides are passionate expert who make your visit to Budapest one to remember!