Budapest Wagner Days Festival 2026 Appoints Co-Artistic Director

Conductor Martin Rajna will join Ádám Fischer at the next festival from June 5–30, 2026

An annual two-week festival celebrating the works of Richard Wagner, Budapest Wagner Days has appointed the 29-year-old Hungarian conductor Martin Rajna as co-artistic director for its 2026 edition alongside conductor and festival founder Ádám Fischer. 

This role comes as Rajna has been assistant conductor for Fischer for Budapest Wagner Days since 2023. 

Currently, he is the principal conductor of the Hungarian State Opera and music director of the Győr Philharmonic Orchestra. Rajna was also recently appointed music director of the Luxembourg Philharmonic as of the 2026/27 season. 

Rajna will be joining the 2026 Budapest Wagner Days as it marks the 20th anniversary of its founding under Fischer’s artistic direction, as well as the 150th anniversary of the premiere of Wagner’s Ring of the Nibelung tetralogy. 

He will principally share conducting duties with Fischer as the festival works to present a double Ring cycle directed by Hartmut Schörghofer, and two performances of Wagner’s Parsifal, which had opened the inaugural Budapest Wagner Days in 2006. 

Rajna’s conducting highlights this season have included the London Philharmonic Orchestra, Luxembourg Philharmonic, Orchestra of Teatro La Fenice, and Nürnberg Symphony Orchestra. He will also return to conduct concerts with the Hungarian National Philharmonic Orchestra and the Hungarian Radio Symphony Orchestra.

In 2022, he was accepted into the Forum Dirigieren program of the German Music Council, and was a Lucerne Festival Academy Conducting Fellow under the mentorship of Thomas Adès. In 2018, he won Hungary’s Junior Prima Award, and in 2023, he received the György Cziffra Festival Talent Prize.

A graduate of the Franz Liszt Academy of Music in Budapest, where he studied with Ádám Medveczky and András Ligeti, Rajna is currently finishing his training at the University of Music Franz Liszt Weimar under conductors Nicolás Pasquet and Ekhart Wycik.