The ScaleupFest 2026

The format is built for depth rather than volume. Sessions run 60 to 90 minutes instead of the usual 20-minute panels, and the two days mix roundtables, masterclasses, and topic-specific meetups with curated city experiences across multiple downtown Budapest venues.

The event exists because the regional conversation has changed. For years, the story was young tech scenes, the first wave of angel investors, engineering talent, and heavy outsourcing for the West. Central and Eastern Europe now has companies that have outgrown the "startup" label. They have product-market fit, a team that works, and revenue on the books. The harder question is how to scale: crossing borders, building enterprise-grade sales machines, attracting later-stage international capital. That conversation has to go past fundraising and into the mess of growing an organisation.

Tracks for 2026

The programme is organised around three dedicated tracks, plus a new one added for this edition.

• Scaling and go-to-market, from winning enterprise customers to building a sales engine that outlives the founder
• Transactions, funding and exits, including later-stage capital, M&A and the fine print of European tax law
• Founders, team and organisation at scale, centred on the shift from a founder-led company to a system-driven one
• Defence tech, a new track for 2026 covering what is opening up for CEE companies in a fast-expanding sector

A theme that keeps coming back is the shift from a founder-led organisation to a system-driven one, the point where a lot of promising companies stall. As one planned speaker said ahead of the event, when the founder is the entire sales system, it works until it suddenly doesn't. The agenda is built around those growing pains. The 2026 festival will also add a new track on defence tech, and what's opening up for CEE companies in a fast-expanding sector.

For a region with plenty of ambition, The ScaleupFest is a working forum for the difficult conversations that turn promising startups into companies that last. It's where CEE's next generation of leaders come to work out how to scale.

How the organisers see it

The 5th edition of The ScaleupFest combines serious conversations about scaling with networking and a real taste of Budapest, great food, rooftop drinks, curated city experiences and a ruin bar or two. At its heart are CEE and SEE scaleup founders and leaders sharing what they've achieved, what they're struggling with and what comes next as they scale beyond the region. We go beyond scratching the surface: no 20-minute panels or inspiration talks, but 60 to 90 minute sessions built around concrete stories, practical insights and real interaction, things you can actually take back and use in your company.

said Lénárd Horgos, the founding father of the event, on what the two days are built to do.

2025 edition throwback

The 2025 edition brought approximately 350 participants from 10 countries, almost one-third of them investors and 60% startup and scaleup founders.

One of the liveliest panels was on the AI boom. CEE isn't going to out-build Silicon Valley on foundational models. Its advantage, as Enis Hulli of e2vc and Balogh Petya of STRT put it, is a dense concentration of world-class engineering talent. Investors want defensible AI applications in niche markets that solve tangible problems, and they're tired of AI wrappers.

On fintech, Noemi Szabo of Elevator Ventures made the case that regulation cuts both ways. Fragmented local compliance blocks cross-border scaling, while frameworks like PSD2 open doors.

Deep tech got a message about patience and validation. Karol Szubstarski of OTB Ventures and Istvan Petak of Genomate Health said the founders who succeed fall in love with the problem, not the technology. R&D cycles are long, so patient capital is essential, and credibility comes from strategic partnerships with universities and industry players on the long road from lab to market.