Hazel Brugger

Allison Hazel Brugger (born 9 December 1993) is a Swiss slam poet, comedian, cabaret artist, and television presenter.

Background Allison Hazel Brugger was born on 9 December 1993 in San Diego, California. Her father is Swiss neuropsychologist Peter Brugger and her mother is an English teacher who is originally from Cologne, Germany.

She grew up in Dielsdorf, near Zürich and has two older brothers. After graduating in Bülach, she began studying philosophy and literature at the University of Zurich, but she eventually quit. When she was 17, she started her poetry slam career in Winterthur, Switzerland northeast of Zürich.

From 2014 and 2017, Brugger wrote a fortnightly column for Das Magazin, a Swiss daily newspaper. From 2013 to 2014, she was a columnist for "Hochparterre" and the TagesWoche. In 2015, she was the moderator of the live talk show "Hazel Brugger Show and Tell" in the Theater am Neumarkt in Zürich which was held every two months. On 9 October 2013, she performed in the fourth Poetry Slam Championships in Bern, Switzerland. In November 2015, she started her first cabaret programme "Hazel Brugger passiert". In February 2019, she began to tour in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland with her second solo programme "Tropical", They have two daughters.

Career Since 2016, she has been a correspondent on the German political satire show heute-show on ZDF. On 26 April she had her first guest appearance on another ZDF satire-show, "Die Anstalt" (The Insane Asylum). In 2017 she won the Salzburger Stier, a prize for cabaret artists. She is the youngest person to ever win this award.

In 2019, Brugger started a YouTube series which she hosts with Spitzer, a co-producer and an author. The show is called Deutschland Was Geht, which translates to What's up, Germany?. In the show Brugger and Spitzer explore interesting and at times bizarre places together with various German comedians. In 2020 the show changed names to What's up, Europe?. As part of her role, she performed the musical number "Made in Switzerland" (with Studer and Petra Mede) in the first semi-final, which was later released as a single.

Brugger has lived in Cologne since 2016. Late Night Berlin: 2 December

Books Ich bin so hübsch (I'm so pretty). Kein & Aber, Zürich 2016. Hazel Brugger, Thomas Spitzer (Authors), Jannes Weber (Illustrations): Deutschland Was Geht – Das Wimmelbuch. Diogenes, Zürich 2021.

Audiobooks Hazel Brugger passiert* : live im Café Kairo Bern. Audio-CD, Der gesunde Menschenversand, Luzern 2016.

Awards 2013: «Swiss Master» of Poetry-Slam 2015: «Young Journalist of the Year» by the magazine Schweizer Journalist 2016: «Swiss Columnist of the Year» voted by a survey conducted by Schweizer Journalist among 1400 journalists. 2017: German prize for cabaret by the city of Mainz 2017: Salzburger Stier 2017: Bavarian cabaret prize for emerging artist 2017: Swiss Comedy Award 2017: German Comedy Award for Best Newcomer 2020: German Comedy Award for Best Female Comedian 2025: Bambi Award in Comedy