Winter program series
18-22 February 2026
Following PLACCC Winter Edition held in February 2025, this year we will once again move to the winter public spaces, focusing on the “largest public space” of Budapest, the Danube. Together with VALYO – City and River Association, we are organising a five-day program series, which includes art projects and thematic discussions, while inviting us to experience the cold physically and mentally.
The location of the events is the Bert Promenade (Bert sétány), a part of the Danube bank between Hengermalom and Árasztó-part in Újbuda that is yet untouched and may be suitable for the development of a free beach in the future. Here, we are offerint programs to our visitors in a 20-person mobile sauna on the Danube bank.
Location: Bert sétány – Entrance from Dürer Kert, 1117 Budapest, Öböl u. 1.
PROGRAMME:
18, 19 and 20 February 2026, 6.30-8 PM- Sauna Talks
Placcc and Valyo will jointly organize discussions on relevant topics with invited experts and partners.
February 18: Swimmable City – speakers: Miklós Tömör, Valyo
February 19: Újbuda Danube Banks – Bert Promenade and Hengerváros – speakers: Kata Balogh and Dániel Győrfi, Valyo
February 20. Hydrofeminism – speakers: Trömböczky Napsugár, Femini Duo
The talks are held in Hungarian.
The Sauna Talks are ticketed programmes, the ticket price also includes 1.5 hours of sauna use.
Ticket prices:
full price ticket: 5,000 HUF
discounted ticket (student, pensioner): 3,500 HUF
supporter ticket: 8,000 HUF
Purchase tickets HERE
21 February 2026, 3 PM and 6 PM – SVUNG Research Group: Cold Comfort
Cold Comfort helps us to experience how extreme cold and heat can be educational. Listening to interviews with experts in mountaineering, ice sculpting and experimental health research, the question arises. The question is a rhetorical one, giving way to a lament. Rather, we open up the experience of meditation to the intense changes in temperature extremes to see if it helps us to experience (even momentary) full presence. Here the ego dissolves and the ‘eco’ emerges – feeling at once delightfully insignificant and yet deeply alive in the unfathomable scale of the world’s structure.
SVUNG is an ever-changing collective of dancers, dance educators and applied theatre practitioners – their work intersects different disciplines, mixing elements of somatics, architecture, visual art, food design, tour guiding and many more. SVUNG conducts artistic research, designing workshops, performance sessions, participatory events and installations where participants explore the sonic, natural and material environment around them, and not least themselves.
Their participatory performance Cold Comfort, which debuted at the minus20degree festival in January 2024 in Flachau, Austria, reflects on the cold and its somatic experience. The audio-driven, ever-present work shared the experience of extreme cold with the audience through expert interviews and the physical experience of the dynamics of cold and heat. The actions that build up the performance gradually reinforce this experience: from body-centred exercises in an outdoor venue (getting to know the snow, the cold, movement exercises) to dipping in icy water for somatic exploration.
Creators:
Borsos Luca, Szemessy Kinga, Trömböczky Napsugár, Zden Brungot Svíteková
Performers:
Borsos Luca, Szemessy Kinga, Trömböczky Napsugár
Language: Hungarian, but English translation is available (please let us know if you do not understand Hungarian)
The performance is a ticketed program, the ticket price also includes 2.5 hours of sauna use.
Ticket prices:
full price ticket: 6,500 HUF
discounted ticket (students, pensioners): 4,500 HUF
supporter ticket: 10,000 HUF
Purchase tickets HERE
22 February 2026 3:30 PM-5:00 PM – Oó Klára: Sauna Troll (reading session)
What happens when poetry goes into the sauna and doesn’t want to come out right away?
A reading from the stories of a secret forest sauna.
Contemporary texts about heat, body, borders,
ritual, close and breaking bonds.
the sauna as a sanctuary
the troll as a narrator
art while sweating
The storyteller troll: Klára Oó
Language: Hungarian, but English translation is available (please let us know if you do not understand Hungarian)
The reading is a ticketed program, the ticket price also includes 1.5 hours of sauna use.
Ticket prices:
full price ticket: 5,000 HUF
discounted ticket (students, pensioners): 3,500 HUF
supporter ticket: 8,000 HUF
Purchase tickets HERE
18-22 February 2026 – PLACCC Winter Sauna sessions
In the time slots between art and professional programs, the sauna can be used upon prior registration.
Tickets can be purchased for a 1.5-hour slot.
Ticket prices:
full price ticket: 4,000 HUF
discounted ticket (students, pensioners): 3,000 HUF
Buy tickets HERE
Important information
An integral part of the programs is the sauna experience and a recommended cold dip in the Danube. Since the events take place in public space, please wear your swimsuit. Slippers or beach shoes are also recommended for comfortable and safe movement on the pebble beach. If you can, arrive with easily removable layers and bring a towel with you. Washing ourselves is only possible in the river, so the use of shower gel and shampoo is not allowed.
The time slots of the artistic and professional programs as well as the sauna sessions does not include the time of changing your clothes, so please arrive early so that you are in your swimsuit by the start of the program.
Depending on availabilities, tickets can also be purchased on site. Payment by bank card is not possible on site.
In the case if you purchased discounted tickets, we ask for the presentation of your student car or ID on site.
Since we consider the wide availability of our programs important, if paying the ticket price causes you any problem, please contact us at placcc.organiser@gmail.com and we will discuss whether we can give you a unique discount on the ticket price.
As environmentally conscious organisation of our programs is critial for PLACCC, we recommend you to arrive at the venue not by car, but by public transport or bicycle.
The venue can be reached by public transport by buses 133E and 33 to the Henglermalom út stop, from where it is about a 5-minute walk, and by tram 1 to the Henglermalom út / Szerémi út stop, from where it is about an 8-minute walk to the entrance to the Dürer Kert.
You can participate in the programs at your own risk!
The events may be photographed and recorded. By participating in the events, participants give their consent to the recording and publication of their appearances and expressions.
Collaborating partner: VALYO – City and the River Association
Special thanks: SaunaTruck, Dürer Kert
Supporters of individual programs: Ministry of Culture and Innovation (SVUNG Research Group: Cold Comfort), The Big Green, Creative Europe (Oó Klára: Sauna Troll)