Anne Applebaum will give the keynote speech at the opening of the Salzburg Festival 2025.

The Pulitzer Prize winner will deliver the keynote address on July 26. Her speech titled, “Democracy and the Music Festival” focuses on the current ideological realignment, democratic decline, and on the role of art in a time of global upheaval.

Applebaum is a journalist and historian. She has worked at The Economist and The Spectator, and currently holds the position as staff writer for The Atlantic. Applebaum is a senior fellow at The Agora Institute at Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. In 2004, she won the Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction for “Gulag: A History.”

The Salzburg Festival runs July 18 through August 18.

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