You can watch the films later, online. Charts are everywhere. But what happened in Warsaw between June 4 and 7 can't be streamed. Bitcoin FilmFest 2026 drew more than 400 people from 15 countries — and it was the people, not the programme, that were its strongest suit. Here are a few stories that prove it.
🚐 A director, a campervan and a golden retriever
Bruno Schiebel came from Germany in his campervan, with a golden retriever aboard. He brought the dark comedy Bitcoin Castle — and left with two Golden Rabbits: the jury award and the audience award. Interestingly, his film had been rejected at other festivals, and Bitcoin FilmFest was his first-ever Bitcoin event and his first festival screening.
That sentence comes up often, year after year — and that, the organizers reckon, is a good sign.
🌍 Four continents in one room
For the documentary Hummingbird — The Bitcoin Jungle Story, its subject and creator, Paul Keating, flew all the way from Costa Rica to present the story of a Lightning-powered economy on the Pacific coast. A group of guests came from India, among them Paco de la India, who led the morning yoga, and Setu of the Bitshala Bitcoin school in Goa. From Thailand came Jimmy and Phi, who run the Bitcoin Chiang Mai community. There was the Australian filmmaker Ox Power and guests from New Zealand. Those who couldn't make it recorded video messages and apologized to the audience from the screen.
🔧 "The car broke down, but we made it on time"
One crew drove to Warsaw from the UK. Their car broke down on the way — and they still arrived on time. Others came by campervan and slept in it. These aren't stories of a luxury conference with a VIP lounge. They're stories of people for whom this weekend was worth every inconvenience.
💡 Patrick and Monika: came by chance, stayed out of curiosity
The best measure of a festival is often those who arrive with no plan. Patrick and Monika, a couple from Poland, turned up at BFF more or less by accident — and stayed to the end.
The organizers estimate that one in four attendees was at the festival for the first time. Many of them came not for the technology but for a good film, a concert or a post-screening conversation. And that, rather than the charts, is most often how people go deeper.
🎨 Artists who organized themselves
The biggest surprise for the organizers themselves was how many artists showed up and set up their own space in the Palace of Culture. The painter and author Jeffrey Peel brought his book South of Market. The graphic artist AgiChoote from Austria had a stand, as did the developer and artist Shadrah from the UK and the Ukrainian craft artist 5Ksana, now living in Poland. On the tables: posters, keychains, T-shirts, socks, 3D-printed gadgets and watercolor portraits — all from people who are at once bitcoiners and makers.
🌙 The best conversations at 4 a.m.
One of the best parties happened in an atmospheric, underground bar where Bitcoin isn't just accepted but preferred. Local musicians and bitcoiners played a joint jam session, and guests talked, danced and drank until four in the morning. Places like that aren't invented — they either exist or they don't.
Guests from abroad also kept coming back to two things that are hard to plan: the beautiful, sunny weather, and how safe and welcoming Warsaw turned out to be. The Palace of Culture itself — a building once associated with central power — became, for four days, the stage for one of the world's most freedom-minded communities.
And that may be the most fitting summary of BFF'26. The next time this network meets in person: June 24–27, 2027, in Warsaw again.
