Budapest right now

The Gordon Ramsay Bar & Grill that opened on 31 July at the Dorothea Hotel, Dorottya utca 2, is the brand's first restaurant in Central and Eastern Europe, a few steps off Vörösmarty tér. The operator's own page lists daily breakfast 06:00-11:00, lunch 12:00-15:00, dinner 18:00-23:00 and the bar until 01:00, which quietly makes it one of the few high-end rooms in the city serving a real breakfast from six. The menu runs the brand's grill canon, Beef Wellington included, with Hungarian touches. Two practical notes the booking page implies and the opening weeks confirmed: reserve ahead, because the first days sold out fast, and dress for it, because elegant attire is stated policy, not a suggestion.

Late-night food near the Basilica usually means settling. Forni di Napoli is the exception: the Bazilika branch at Október 6. utca 19 runs daily from noon to midnight with the kitchen open until 23:00, which makes it one of the few real plates in the quarter after the dinner rush dies. The pizzeria's own wall of titles includes European Champion Pizzeria 2026 and a fourth place at the 2026 world championship, and the menu is strict Neapolitan pizza plus fresh pasta rather than a bit of everything. A second branch sits at Szent István körút 7-9 if you are on the Nagykörút instead. It shares the street with Tonichi, the ramen shop two doors down, so Október 6. utca is quietly becoming the food street nobody markets.

The team behind the Hachi restaurants opened a dessert-only spot on 23 July at Zrínyi utca 12, two streets from St. Stephen's Basilica. Hachi Deza does the wobbly Japanese fluffy pancakes in rotating flavours, glass-cup desserts, fruit-and-cream milk-bread sandwiches and a short list of creative drinks. It is still running itself in quietly, so expect the menu to shift and the queue to form on weekend afternoons; the pancakes are made to order and were never a grab-and-go dessert anywhere on earth.

Aura Bay opened on 17 July on Óbuda Island: eight indoor rooms and a 5,700 m² outdoor light garden, 258,000 LED points, with a 360-degree domed room as the finale. Entry is by time slot and the slot only fixes when you walk in, not how long you stay. The practical catch: the garden is open from 16:00, but the installations only show properly after dusk, which is why the 16:00-19:30 day slots are cheaper (adults 4,000 Ft plus a 10 percent booking fee online, 5,000 Ft at the gate) than the 19:30-22:00 evening ones (5,000 Ft plus fee online, 5,600 at the gate). Children, students and seniors pay 3,000/3,300 Ft plus fee depending on the slot. Runs through 31 December.

If Saturday evening was going to be the Lánchíd and a walk up to the Castle, the Generali Night Run is on the same ground. The race centre sits on the Műegyetem rakpart and the day opens at 08:00, when the half marathon leaves the Buda lower embankment for two laps over the Lánchíd to Széchenyi István tér, Eötvös tér and the Pest lower embankment, turning at the Parliament visitor centre. Between 10:30 and 13:30 the Danube swim goes off the Salkaházi Sára rakpart. The evening runs start at 20:30 over 5 km, then 11 km at 21:50 and a headlamp 11 km at 22:10, all leaving the lower embankment and all climbing Hunyadi János út to Dísz tér and Palota út, dropping down Váralja utca and through the Alagút, then crossing the Lánchíd twice. A 17.3 km Night Bike ride follows the same loop and the field is capped at 4,000.

Sólet is the slow bean and smoked meat pot that Jewish Budapest cooks for Saturday, and on Sunday August 30 the Városháza park gets four of them side by side. The tenth Sóletfesztivál opens at 11:00 with a Hungarian, an Israeli, a street food and a Hegyalja version, each with its own cook: Cserháti Tamara, Csonka András, Lantos Lili and Myers Tzivia. The organiser prices entry at 0 Ft. The park runs off the Károly körút between Deák Ferenc tér and the Gerlóczy utca, which puts it a few minutes from the M1, M2 and M3 interchange, and the Jewish Cultural Festival opens the same day across the city's synagogues.

Planned maintenance keeps the M4 between Keleti pályaudvar and Szent Gellért tér – Műegyetem until 12:00 on Sunday August 30, so the western tail of the line is off. Trams 19 and 49 reach Kelenföld vasútállomás instead and the 49 runs more often that morning, with tram 1 as the other way across. If you are coming in by train, BKK's own advice is to stay on past Kelenföld to Déli pályaudvar and take the M2 into the center. The Gellért is not affected: Szent Gellért tér is the last station the metro still serves.

Maintenance takes the H5 off its northern half from Thursday August 27 to Sunday August 30, so the train terminates at Békásmegyer and buses cover the rest. Three of them run: H5 to Szentendre calling everywhere, H5A to Pomáz, and H5E straight to Szentendre with Szentistvántelep and Pomáz skipped. Take the H5E if Szentendre is the whole plan, because it is the one that does not stop for the commuter villages. Regional buses 855, 856, 860, 861 and 862 also cover the Pomáz to Békásmegyer stretch, and your HÉV ticket is valid on them between Pomáz H and Békásmegyer H.

The operator's live service lists put the saunas back in business. Palatinus shows its steam cabin at 40 to 50 degrees, the aroma sauna at 50 to 60 and the Finnish sauna at 90 to 100. Széchenyi lists all ten of its chambers, from the Volcano sauna to the salt room. The August notice that suspended every electrically heated sauna and steam chamber, at Csillaghegy, Dandár, Palatinus, Paskál, Pesterzsébeti, Pünkösdfürdő and Római, set its own window at ten days from August 2, and none of those baths now posts a sauna suspension. One change did outlast the cuts and is permanent: Paskál is converting its geothermal sauna into a salt inhalatorium, and that service is gone for good.

The operator's pool list has the 40 degree hot plunge and the 35 degree brick pool down for maintenance from August 25 to August 29, and both sit in the steam block rather than out in the sun, so the loss lands on the quiet indoor circuit most visitors never reach. Everything else is listed as running: the three outdoor pools, the whole thermal block, the medical pools and all ten saunas. Entry costs the same this week as any other, because Széchenyi does not discount for a pool being out. If the hot plunge was the plan, Lukács has one at the same heat and a fraction of the crowd.

The famous part of Széchenyi is the courtyard, and the operator has now dated the maintenance on all three of its pools. The leisure pool with the whirlpool goes first, out September 7 to 18. The 38 degree thermal pool, the one in every photograph, is out September 21 to October 2. The lap pool follows October 5 to 16. They never overlap, so the courtyard is never empty and you always have two of the three, but a September trip built around the whirlpool or an October one built around lengths needs the dates checked first. The indoor thermal block, the medical pools and the saunas run throughout.

The Lukács notice grew a third line. Renovation work has taken out the men's changing room, the private tub service and now the accessible changing facility, and only the last two reach the English page, so a man reading in English still arrives without knowing his changing room is shut. Rudas has been the other way for weeks: its own notice says guests with reduced mobility cannot use the bath at all, for technical reasons. Neither operator gives a reopening date, and with Gellért closed until 2028 that is three of the historic baths a wheelchair user cannot plan around right now. Read the Hungarian page before you book, because it carries notices the English one does not.

Bartók Feszt takes over the strip between the Műegyetem rakpart, Szent Gellért tér, the Budafoki út and the BME garden on Saturday August 29, from 09:00 until 01:00 the following morning, and every programme on it is free. You walk in from Szent Gellért tér or from the Budafoki út, which puts the M4, trams 19, 41, 47, 48, 49, 56 and 56A and buses 7 and 133E at the door, so it is the least effort of any big festival in the city to reach. The civil quarter alone runs close to forty things between 09:00 and 19:00, and a few of the workshops want you registered in advance. From August 24 the same organisers run a smaller warm up week called Belépő in the neighbourhood, and they flag closures across the site between August 28 and 30, which is worth knowing if you were counting on parking near the Gellért.

Rudas has been coed since August 3 and that stops on August 23. From Monday August 24 the Turkish bath returns to its split week: men on Monday, Thursday and Friday from 6:00 to 10:45 and all of Wednesday until 20:00, women all of Tuesday until 20:00, and coed from 11:00 on Monday, Thursday and Friday plus both weekend days. Tuesday and Wednesday are the ones to watch, because the Turkish bath belongs to one sex for the whole day and the wrong day leaves you with the wellness wing and the saunas. The split week also brings back the ticket that covers the Turkish bath alone, 8,000 Ft on Monday, Thursday and Friday before 10:45, against 12,000 Ft for the all zone ticket from Monday to Thursday.

BKK extends the 81 trolleybus on August 31, and the new end of the line is the part worth knowing. Nothing changes between Örs vezér tere and Kassai tér. After that it carries on along Erzsébet királyné útja, past Mexikói út M and through the newly wired zoo curve onto Állatkerti körút, finishing at Dózsa György út M on the M3. Állatkerti körút is the address of the Zoo, the Capital Circus and the Széchenyi bath, with the Heroes' Square museums at the end of it, so all of that comes off the eastern terminus of the M2 without a change. The M1 is still reachable at Mexikói út, and there is a new interchange with tram 1 at the Erzsébet királyné útja underpass stop. It runs every day, on the hours it keeps now, with low floor air conditioned vehicles.

Andrássy út hits 150, and the two weeks from August 24 to September 6 are being filled with free programs along it. The part worth walking for needs no booking: the avenue's historical street signs go back up in their original spots for a few weeks, so it reads as Sugár út, Sztálin út, Magyar Ifjúság útja and Népköztársaság útja again, which is most of the twentieth century written on one street. A free treasure hunt runs the full fortnight too, with the starter pack handed out at Eötvös10 on Eötvös utca 10 and at the Millennium Underground Museum under Erzsébet tér. Several of the guided walks are already fully booked, so take the signs and the hunt instead.

The Budapest Wine Festival runs September 9 to 12 on the Buda Castle terraces, and this year it has added an Explorer day ticket at 4,450 Ft, half what the day ticket costs at the gate. The two catches are worth knowing before you buy: you have to walk in between opening and 17:00, and once you leave you cannot come back in on that wristband, where the ordinary day ticket lets you in and out all day. It is sold online only and the latest you can buy it is midnight on the day before you go. If you would rather have the full run of the day, the advance day ticket is 7,900 Ft on Wednesday or Thursday and 8,900 Ft on Friday or Saturday until August 23, and each goes up by 1,000 Ft after that. The four day pass is 15,900 Ft instead of 16,900 Ft on the same deadline.

Fővárosi Vízművek asked all of its customers on August 12 to cut back on piped drinking water. The catchment is short of rain, so the brief rise of a few centimetres the forecast allows for will be followed by more falling, and drawing water in those conditions takes steadily more equipment and more power. Nothing is rationed in Budapest and the tap water is still good to drink, so keep filling your bottle rather than buying plastic. The sharp end is Dunabogdány up in the Danube Bend, where consumption has climbed to nearly the whole available production capacity and a water restriction is already in force. In the city it sits alongside the measures you can already see: the fountains are off and the landmark floodlighting is still dark.

BKK is adding evening departures on tram 2, the line along the Pest bank that most visitors ride for the view of the Castle and the bridges. From August 14, on Fridays and Saturdays between 19:00 and 22:00, it runs every 7 to 8 minutes. BKK gives the reason as the traffic the riverside now generates after dark, naming the reopened lower embankment and Budapest Park among the draws along the route. It is a small change with a real effect: the run along the Pest bank is the cheapest sightseeing in the city, and from mid-August the evening wait for it gets shorter.