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Speakers 2026
These are the first confirmed names. The line-up will grow over the coming weeks.
Barbara Matejčic
(Chroatia)
Croatian investigative journalist. She covers social issues and human rights in the Balkans. She collaborates with international media such as The Guardian, Süddeutsche Zeitung and Balkan Insight. Author of a book on marginalized groups in Croatia and a documentary film about asylum seekers. In 2024, she received a special European Press Prize for “The Border Graves Investigation” – an investigation that confirmed the existence of 1,015 unmarked migrant graves in eight European countries. Winner of the IJ4EU Impact Award and finalist for the 2025 Daphne Caruana Galizia Prize. She teaches journalism at VERN’ University in Zagreb.
Jolyon Naegele
(United States)
American journalist who was among the few accredited Czech-speaking Western reporters in pre-revolutionary Czechoslovakia. From 1984, he worked as a Voice of America correspondent for Central and Eastern Europe, covering the collapse of communist power in the region including the events of 1989. He interviewed Václav Havel, Alexander Dubček, Bohumil Hrabal, and many other important figures. He later worked as an editor at Radio Free Europe, spending fourteen years as a political analyst with the UN mission in Kosovo, ultimately serving as director of political affairs.
Ludwika Włodek
(Poland)
Polish reporter, sociologist and lecturer at the Centre for East European Studies at the University of Warsaw. She contributes to Polish media outlets, including Gazeta Wyborcza. She is the author of books of reportage on Central Asian countries, Algerians in France and women in Afghanistan. She also wrote Four Flags, One Address: Stories from Spiš, which will be published in Slovak in 2025. The great-granddaughter of the renowned Polish writer Jarosław Iwaszkiewicz, she also chairs the jury of the prestigious Kapuściński Award for reportage literature.
András Földes
(Hungary)
Hungarian journalist, cameraman and reporter. After Index, the largest Hungarian news website where Földes worked for two decades, collapsed due to pressure from Orbán’s government, he began working at the opposition weekly HVG, often compared to The Economist. His work is known primarily for reporting from war zones and conflict areas including Afghanistan, Iraq, Niger, Iran and Libya. His lifetime work has been recognized with the Joseph Pulitzer Memorial Prize, the Hégető Honorka Prize, the Development Journalism Prize and the Hungarian Press Photo award.
Peter Hanák
(Slovakia)
Journalist at Aktuality.sk, researcher and university lecturer. Author of the International Press Institute analysis of political influence on Slovak media. Developed a method for measuring media ownership concentration. Hosts NA ROVINU, interviews with politicians and experts. He worked at Hospodárske noviny and RTVS. He teaches at the Faculty of Law, Comenius University Bratislava, and at BISLA. He has received the Open Society Foundation national journalism prize twice.
Apolena Rychlíková
(Czech Republic)
Czech investigative journalist, documentary filmmaker and editor-in-chief of the media project Page Not Found. She champions slow journalism and focuses in depth on topics such as social inequality, minority rights and sexual violence. She worked at the online daily A2larm and collaborates with Czech Radio. Winner of the Journalism Prize for Best Commentary and the Novinářská křepelka award for best journalists under 33. She was also the first Czech woman in history to be nominated for the prestigious European Press Prize in the opinion category.
Jakub Macek
(Czech Republic)
Sociologist of media and Associate Professor at the Department of Media Studies and Journalism at Masaryk University in Brno. His research focuses on how people consume media and how they trust or distrust it, and the role of media in societal polarization. He created the Political Antagonism Scale (PAS), a tool for measuring politically motivated antagonism that captures how polarization transcends ideological differences and creates an identity-based “us versus them” perspective. He studies how media shape political attitudes and how alternative media function in polarized societies.
Marta Jančkárová
(Slovakia)
Broadcast journalist and moderator at Slovak Television and Radio. She has been working in media since 2002 and studied English language and literature at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra. She hosted O 5 minút 12, Sobotné dialógy, and television interviews. Together with dozens of colleagues, she protested against the political capture of public service broadcasting, after which STVR management removed her from major political discussions. She was nominated in the Slovak Woman of the Year award in the Media and Communication category.
Magdalena Rojo
(Slovakia, Mexico)
Slovak journalist living in Mexico. She specialises in reporting on global issues and human rights, particularly in less developed countries. She advocates responsible travel that respects local cultures and the environment. Together with her husband, Noel, she has created a comprehensive picture of migration from Mexico, Senegal, Ethiopia, India and Romania through the ‘Women Who Stay’ project. Their aim was to challenge prevailing prejudices and perceptions of Europe in the rest of the world.
Karol Grygoruk
(Poalnd)
Documentary photographer and activist. His work focuses on human rights, migration issues and the lives of marginalised groups, particularly those affected by social exclusion. During his career, he has collaborated with numerous non-governmental organisations, including Amnesty International, the Minority Rights Group and Greenpeace. He is the co-founder of RATS, a documentary collective that specialises in collaborating with non-governmental organisations and providing humanitarian aid support.
Zuzana Kozárová
(Slovakia)
Lecturer at the Department of Journalism and New Media at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra and Erasmus+ coordinator at the department. She is the author of an escape game about disinformation, which she adapted into English for Slovak and international festival participants. She leads a project on critical thinking and media literacy at universities and publishes on ethical issues in journalistic practice and the communication potential of media in the digital age.
Branislav Dobšinský
(Slovakia)
Slovak journalist and moderator with over 30 years’ experience in electronic media. From 2007 to 2018, he hosted the legendary Saturday Dialogues on RTVS, conducting confrontational interviews with some of Slovakia’s most prominent politicians. He also created the discussion format Bez obalu (Without Wrapping), in which he converses with inspiring personalities from outside the world of politics. Since leaving public radio, he has produced and hosted podcasts for Aktuality.sk, including the morning show Ráno nahlas (Morning Out Loud) with Jaro Barborák. Dobšinský is one of the journalists who have shaped political journalism in Slovakia since 1989.
Martin Turček
(Slovakia)
Investigative reporter and editor at the news website Aktuality.sk, where he has worked since 2018. As a journalist, he specialises in exposing scandals and data- and open-source-based investigative journalism. His investigative work includes exposing the opaque distribution of EU funds, monitoring the assets of politicians and state officials, and uncovering tax evasion by the elite and clientelism. In 2022, he published the book Kajúcnik, which charts the life and work of the former head of the tax investigation unit.
Lukáš Onderčanin
(Slovakia)
Editor-in-chief of foreign news at the daily newspaper SME. As a journalist, he mainly covers events in Central Europe, Ukraine and Russia. He is also the editor-in-chief of Stories of the 20th Century, a quarterly magazine published by the civic association Post Bellum. In 2021, he won the Journalism Award for his report on media freedom in Hungary. He is the author of the book Utopia in Lenin’s Garden: The Czechoslovak Commune Interhelpo, for which he won the Anasoft Litera Readers’ Award. He is also an avid traveller and the host of the travel podcast Všesvet.
Ľuba Lesná
(Slovakia)
Investigative journalist, writer and former editor at Radio Free Europe. During Vladimír Mečiar’s government, she primarily focused on cases related to the Slovak Information Service (SIS), and she has written several non-fiction books on the subject, including Únos prezidentovho syna (The Kidnapping of the President’s Son) and Krátke dejiny tajnej služby (A Brief History of the Secret Service). She is the recipient of the Czech-Slovak Egon Erwin Kisch Prize for non-fiction.
Jakub Šrol
(Slovakia)
Researcher at the Institute of Experimental Psychology, Centre for Social and Psychological Sciences, Slovak Academy of Sciences. His research primarily focuses on the psychological reasons why people believe in conspiracy theories, the consequences of these beliefs and their impact on relationships and societal functioning. He also addresses topics related to climate change, analysing the psychological reasons why society is not doing enough to mitigate the effects of this crisis. Since 2024, he has been the editor-in-chief of the international journal Studia Psychologica.
Want to speak at the 2026 festival?
If you’d like to participate in the program or have a topic suggestion, write to us at: info@svetmedziriadkami.sk
