Varso Place is a skyscraper in Warsaw overlooking the Warszawa Centralna railway station and the historic Palace of Culture and Science. Standing 310 meters tall, Varso is the tallest building in Poland. In fact, it’s the tallest building in Europe outside of Russia, beating the Shard in London by a handful of inches. If I crane my neck, I can just barely make out its silhouette through the October fog from my hotel room window.
Completed in the fall of 2022, Varso stands as a testament to the incredible progress and growth Warsaw has seen in the past decade or two, a glass and steel monument to the future of Poland’s economic and cultural hub. It seems that every year, there are new, impressive skyscrapers here, new stores opening, ever more luxurious cars on the streets—more, more, more.
Audio Video Show 2025, which runs from Friday, October 24, through Sunday, October 26, is another example of the Polish capital’s rising economic and cultural relevance. This year marks the show’s 27th iteration, and it’s grown to become one of the most important and largest hi-fi trade fairs in the world. The SoundStage! team is in town through the weekend to provide up-to-the-minute coverage of the latest news, product introductions, announcements, and of course, reports of the best sound from the show. As I just hinted, we’re expecting this year’s AVS to offer more than ever before.
My aforementioned hotel room is located in the Radisson Blu Sobieski hotel, which serves this week as the de facto base of operations for me, SoundStage! Ultra editor Jason Thorpe, and SoundStage! founder Doug Schneider. It’s also one of three locations at which Audio Video Show 2025 takes place, the other two being the Golden Tulip hotel and PGE Narodowy, the national stadium of Poland, which more typically hosts soccer games and such.
The Golden Tulip and the Radisson Blu Sobieski are located kitty-corner from one another across a great intersection of several of Warsaw’s main roads and railways, and together have 110 rooms for the exhibition. PGE Narodowy is located a short drive by car or bus from the other locations, and itself boasts around 80 rooms. This year, the event organizers have added eight extra-large showrooms at PGE Narodowy, where we’re hoping to see and hear some high-end audio fireworks from several of the top European boutique brands.
If you’re new here, the way SoundStage! tackles show coverage is a bit different than the bulk of the hi-fi press. Rather than spending the next six weeks posting a barrage of room profiles with product names, prices, dark pictures, and not much else, we publish the highlights of the show here, with subjective sound reports, conversations, and info directly from manufacturers and distributors, and more. The catch is, we only write and publish during the three days Audio Video Show is running—when the show wraps, so do we. Our aim is to capture the mood and energy of the show, and we hope that you enjoy experiencing it vicariously through us.
I hope I’ve conveyed my excitement about Audio Video Show 2025 strongly enough. Keep your eyes on SoundStage! Global’s homepage through the weekend, where we’ll be publishing the latest from the event as it happens. I’m really looking forward to seeing what Warsaw has in store for us, but first, I’m going to go check out the observation deck at Varso Place. Audio Video Show 2025 is a helluva way to experience Warsaw, but I’m going to get a top-down view from 230 meters, too.
Matt Bonaccio
Contributor, SoundStage!
