Lead: The fifth edition takes place on 16-17 September in Budapest, and the first speakers are confirmed.
Registration is now officially open for The ScaleupFest 2026, the region's most practical gathering for founders, investors and ecosystem builders scaling out of CEE.
This year, ScaleupFest moves from one stage to a whole city: two days of curated meetups, roundtables and founder discussions across Budapest's downtown venues, woven together with real moments of the city itself.
This year's themes include
- Scaling beyond CEE
- Tech M&A and deal readiness
- Defence and dual-use tech
- Leadership under pressure
- AI-driven GTM
Among the first confirmed speakers and contributors
- Gabriella Mátyás-Kollár, Shiwaforce
- Gergely Bihary, ElevenLabs
- Ivan Jelušić, Orqa FPV
- Balázs Szekeres, Perciv AI
- Richard Malovic, Whalebone
- Konstantin Bezuhanov, PhD, Evrotrust
Together with CEE-focused investors, ecosystem players and more to be announced.
Your ticket gives you access to the event, while registrations for the individual meetups will open closer to the festival. As every session has limited capacity, you will have the opportunity to build your own ScaleupFest experience.
If you are building, funding or scaling technology companies in Central and Eastern Europe, we would love to see you in Budapest.
Register here: https://luma.com/thescaleupfest2026