Budapest International Film Festival Returns for a Third Edition
If you’re planning a Budapest trip for late October, you might want to build in a few evenings at the movies. From October 24 to November 1, 2026, the Budapest International Film Festival, known as BIFF, takes over the Corvin Cinema for nine days of international cinema, marking its third year running. What started as a promising newcomer two years ago has grown into one of the city’s defining cultural gatherings, and this edition is the biggest yet, with 45 films drawn from the world’s top festivals alongside fresh Hungarian productions.
Event Details at a Glance
- Dates: October 24 to November 1, 2026
- Venue: Corvin Cinema, Budapest
- Program size: 45 films, including six titles announced so far
- Opening film: The Diary of a Chambermaid, directed by Radu Jude
- Extras: filmmaker talks, panel discussions, retrospective screenings, and international guests
- Tickets and full lineup: announced in late September
What’s Screening This Year
The lineup leans into exactly the kind of adventurous, festival-circuit cinema that makes BIFF worth building a trip around. The opening gala belongs to Romanian director Radu Jude’s The Diary of a Chambermaid, a reworking of the same Octave Mirbeau novel that inspired earlier films by Jean Renoir and Luis Buñuel, this time centering on a Romanian immigrant protagonist and freshly premiered in the Directors’ Fortnight section at Cannes.
Hungarian cinema gets a strong showing too. Lili Horvát’s My Notes on Mars, which premiered in Venice, stars Rupert Friend and Mackenzie Davis as a couple thrown into crisis when the woman mysteriously vanishes for weeks before resurfacing at her own memorial service. László Nemes brings Moulin, a historical drama about a French resistance fighter subjected to brutal Nazi torture during the Second World War. Rounding out the first wave of announcements are Jane Schoenbrun’s nostalgic slasher-satire Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, starring Hannah Einbinder and Gillian Anderson, John Wilson’s genre-defying documentary The History of Concrete, and Marine Atlan’s melancholic coming-of-age film La Gradiva, set on a school trip to Pompeii.
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More Than Just Screenings
BIFF has always positioned itself as something closer to a meeting point for film culture than a straightforward screening series, and this year keeps that spirit alive with filmmaker conversations, panel discussions, and retrospective programming running alongside the main slate. Festival director Kristóf Horváth described the event’s growing identity, noting that over nine days BIFF creates a kind of parallel reality where discovering and discussing films together becomes the rhythm of everyday life for the festival’s audience.
The festival’s main hub, the Corvin Cinema, sits in Józsefváros on Corvin köz, a historic art-deco theater that’s easy to reach by tram or metro and surrounded by cafés and restaurants worth exploring between screenings. BIFF is backed by major sponsors including Raiffeisen, Visa, MOL, Telekom Film, the National Film Institute, and the city of Budapest, with Telex and RTL+ serving as featured media partners.
Planning Your Visit
Full program details and ticket sales are expected toward the end of September, so it’s worth keeping an eye on the festival’s official channels if you want the best seat selection for the opening gala or any of the buzzier titles. For travelers who enjoy pairing a Budapest getaway with genuinely international, festival-caliber film programming rather than mainstream releases, BIFF offers a rare chance to catch award-circuit favorites from Cannes, Venice, and Sundance months before they reach wider distribution, all within walking distance of the city’s best coffee and dinner spots.