Hazel Brugger

Allison Hazel Brugger, born on 9 December 1993, is a Swiss slam poet, comedian, cabaret artist, and television presenter. She is widely known for her stage performances, column writing, and broadcast television appearances across Switzerland, Germany, and Austria.

Brugger was born in San Diego, California. Her father is Swiss neuropsychologist Peter Brugger, and her mother is an English teacher originally from Cologne, Germany. She grew up in Dielsdorf, near Zürich, alongside two older brothers. After graduating high school in Bülach, she studied philosophy and literature at the University of Zurich before quitting her studies.

At age 17, Brugger began her poetry slam career in Winterthur, Switzerland. In October 2013, she performed in the fourth Poetry Slam Championships in Bern and was named Swiss Master of Poetry-Slam. She also worked as a columnist, writing for Hochparterre and TagesWoche from 2013 to 2014, and contributing a fortnightly column to the Swiss daily newspaper Das Magazin between 2014 and 2017.

In 2015, Brugger hosted the bi-monthly live talk show Hazel Brugger Show and Tell at the Theater am Neumarkt in Zürich and launched her first cabaret programme, Hazel Brugger passiert. Her second solo programme, Tropical, toured Germany, Austria, and Switzerland starting in February 2019 and debuted on Netflix on 2 December 2020. She also released audiobooks and published books, including Ich bin so hübsch in 2016.

Brugger became a correspondent on the ZDF political satire show heute-show in 2016 and made guest appearances on shows such as Die Anstalt, Neo Magazin Royale, Dittsche, and Late Night Berlin. In 2019, she began hosting the YouTube show Deutschland Was Geht with co-producer and author Thomas Spitzer. The show, which explored various locations with German comedians, was renamed What's up, Europe? in 2020.

In 2025, Brugger co-hosted the Eurovision Song Contest in Basel alongside Sandra Studer, with Michelle Hunziker joining for the final. During the first semi-final, she performed the musical number "Made in Switzerland" with Studer and Petra Mede, which was later released as a single.

Brugger has received multiple industry recognitions, including Young Journalist of the Year in 2015 and Swiss Columnist of the Year in 2016. In 2017, she became the youngest winner of the Salzburger Stier and won the German prize for cabaret, the Bavarian cabaret prize, the Swiss Comedy Award, and the German Comedy Award for Best Newcomer. She later won the German Comedy Award for Best Female Comedian in 2020 and a Bambi Award in Comedy in 2025.

Brugger has lived in Cologne since 2016. She married Thomas Spitzer in 2020, and the couple has two daughters.